Global Activism: India’s PUKAR Collective Supports Youth In Urban Slums

By Worldview
An Indian girl walks after collecting drinking water at a slum area in Mumbai, Maharashtra state, India, Saturday, April 30, 2016. Much of India is reeling under a weekslong heat wave and severe drought conditions that have decimated crops, killed livestock and left at least 330 million Indians without enough water for their daily needs. Rivers, lakes and dams have dried up in parts of the western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and overall officials say that groundwater reservoirs are at just 22 percent capacity.(AP Photo/ Rajanish Kakade )
An Indian girl walks after collecting drinking water at a slum area in Mumbai, Maharashtra state, India. Rajanish Kakade / AP Photo
An Indian girl walks after collecting drinking water at a slum area in Mumbai, Maharashtra state, India, Saturday, April 30, 2016. Much of India is reeling under a weekslong heat wave and severe drought conditions that have decimated crops, killed livestock and left at least 330 million Indians without enough water for their daily needs. Rivers, lakes and dams have dried up in parts of the western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and overall officials say that groundwater reservoirs are at just 22 percent capacity.(AP Photo/ Rajanish Kakade )
An Indian girl walks after collecting drinking water at a slum area in Mumbai, Maharashtra state, India. Rajanish Kakade / AP Photo

Global Activism: India’s PUKAR Collective Supports Youth In Urban Slums

By Worldview
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Pukar means to “call out” in Hindi. It’s also the acronym for Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research, a research collective based in Mumbai, India.

Through the lens of urban youth, the group’s research focuses on the links between poverty, health and social equity. Worldview visited the collective in 2015 when we took our Global Activism series on the road to India. 

We get an update from PUKAR Executive Director, Anita Patil-Deshmukh, on PUKAR’s Barefoot Researcher project. It gives young people from slum communities the chance to research and document community challenges like poor water quality, suicide, HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis. 

Patil-Deshmukh will also tell us about her plans to replicate PUKAR’s work in some of Chicago’s most underserved neighborhoods.