These soldiers come armed with food plates

I am at the beach on a Saturday evening in May, and the breeze from the Bay of Bengal proves futile against the clammy air. There are hundreds out on Chennai’s Marina, India’s largest beach, watching the sun go down. A few young men and women in green tees are engaged in a little activity of their own. It is no game, no trite contest.

It’s a battle against hunger, they tell me, as they heave from their cars huge polythene bags containing packets of freshly-cooked, piping hot biryani. They catch the attention of the gypsies, who come running for dinner. The old and the haggard await their turn; a few are woken from their slumber and given the good news that food has arrived.

This group of 20-somethings that takes from those willing to provide and gives to those in need calls itself the Robin Hood Army. And Chennai is but a small Nottingham. Across the subcontinent there are hundreds more volunteers, each of whom is a Robin.

“There is no money involved. We get food from restaurants and other donors, and distribute it among the homeless once every week,” says Bhisham Sahi, a founding member of the RHA’s Chennai chapter.

Last week, the Chennai chapter fed more than 500. That’s a small number. Across the Deccan, Pune shows the way with nearly four times that figure; Kolkata and Mumbai stand second and third, respectively. The charts are shared on WhatsApp groups, and each week there is an attempt to better previous efforts.

“By now we’ve mapped the city. We know where to find the hungry,” says Sahi, who runs a digital marketing start-up. A few other Robins in Chennai are employed in MNCs or start-ups, and rush after work for the weekly Friday or Saturday drives.

Their donor is M Mahadevan, who owns restaurants, pubs and bakeries across the world. The globetrotting businessman began his innings in Chennai in 1979, armed with a postgraduate degree and ₹400 in hand. “I was 24 and looking for a job. It was difficult limiting myself to one meal a day to save money. I know what hunger is. To give a meal to a hungry human being is the ultimate blessing,” he says.

Joining the dots

In the autumn of 2014, Neel Ghose and his friend Anand Sinha got together in Delhi. They were on to something. Ghose, now international vice-president of Zomato, had brought home an idea from Lisbon.

“I happened to chance upon an organisation, Refood, which distributes excess food to the needy through volunteers. I observed their processes, spent some time with the founder understanding the model, before trying out something similar in India.”

And thus was born the RHA.

The idea soon spread to the other metros, and even smaller cities such as Indore, Bhopal and Ambala. Then in February 2015, it was the turn of Karachi and, soon after, Lahore.

Karachi resident Sarah Afridi, one of Ghose’s friends from London School of Economics, came to know of the RHA from Facebook. “We got talking and realised that the hunger and inequality problem was as acute in Pakistan,” says Ghose. Last year, coinciding with the India-Pakistan cricket World Cup match, the RHA launched in Pakistan.

Starting with six volunteers, Karachi’s RHA is now 70-strong and says it has fed 50,000 slum-dwellers within a year. Nearly half of this city’s 20 million lives below the poverty line.

“You have so many restaurants with so much food going waste. All that is needed is for somebody to get the food to the right people,” Afridi says.

The Pakistan experience enthused RHA to launch in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta in April, and Bangladesh in mid-June.

“We realised how transferable the model is — we decided to create teams in Southeast Asia,” Ghose says.

Leftover largesse

Every year, there is a puja before Avinash’s father sets off on his pilgrimage to Sabarimala. A lot of people are invited home, and food is served. “This year we made arrangements for a hundred people. Only 80 turned up,” says Avinash, a 25-year-old who owns a fashion start-up in Chennai.

Together with two friends, both Robins like him, Avinash drove to a settlement near the Chetpet railway station and distributed the rice, sambar and curry. “Our caterer had prepared extra food. We ended up feeding around 40 people.”

Every Friday evening, he joins Sahi, RHA Chennai’s coordinator Avanthika Ravikumar, and other members at a nondescript bakery in the city’s posh Alwarpet locality.

Winner’s Bakery was the first of Mahadevan’s 42 ventures, and very dear to his heart. By 7.30, his employees have 300 packets of vegetable biryani ready. The RHA volunteers load them into their cars and split up. Some head to the beach, and the others to Egmore, Kilpauk or Mylapore.

They scan their regular routes — settlements under flyovers, pavements, railway stations, bus depots, even shelters. Children and the elderly are given first preference, as also the homeless. Even road workers are provided packets.

On the searing hot afternoon of May 29, World Hunger Day, the group reached out to the needy with glasses of buttermilk. In the evening, they fed nearly a thousand people. Most drives conclude by 9 pm, after which the Robins huddle for dinner, or retire for the day.

The RHA units elsewhere function similarly. In some cities there are multiple donors, each providing smaller quantities of food. Not all of them can donate regularly.

The Robins keep scouting for more donors to keep the effort going. “Our donors are restaurants that provide food regularly, and others such as caterers, bakers, and so on who provide food after their events,” says Suvarna Mandal, the Delhi-based head of RHA India.

“The food we serve is good quality, surplus food. However, some of our restaurant partners generously provide freshly-prepared meals as well,” she adds.

Their north Delhi unit alone has around 10 regular donors. “The Roast House, Paratha King and Foodbank are among those who help us,” says Umasankar Patra, an RHA member and doctoral student at Delhi University. “In south Delhi, we have Lord of the Drinks and The Hub, to name a few.”

Hunger vs wastage

“Most of our 3,500 Robins are students or young working professionals, including lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors, techies and teachers. Everyone does this in their free time,” says Ghose.

What motivates these youngsters, mostly from well-to-do backgrounds, to dole out food on weekends?

“Honestly, charity or giving is probably a selfish act — you end up feeling good about yourself,” Ghose reasons.

Mahadevan is more emphatic in his endorsement of the RHA’s intent. “I have 250 partners around the world and all are good to me, I think I am good at judging people. I knew they [RHA members] were sincere when I met them,” he says. That didn’t, of course, stop him from doubly ensuring that his donations were put to good use; he got a few NGO members to track the RHA’s work during the first few drives and found his trust vindicated.

Patra points out the contrast with NGOs that consume funds to sustain themselves while providing succour to those they serve.

“RHA feeds nearly 10,000 people across the subcontinent every single week. This is without any monetary contribution from any of the Robins, and also without any centralised control,” he says.

Avinash says it was his desire to be a part of something bigger than himself that led him to RHA. “Here one evil is eliminated by another — hunger is eliminated by food wastage,” he explains succinctly.

Others see it as time and money well spent rather than frittered away on mindless weekend merriment. “Rahul, for instance, picks us up week after week, spends at least ₹300 a day on petrol,” says Prateek Sinha (name changed), a volunteer from RHA Delhi.

The ‘selfless’ act does have its benefits, too, both tangible and intangible.

“Being a Robin includes gathering other key skill-sets such as teamwork, leadership, management of groups, spontaneous problem-solving, management of social media, and so on,” says Mandal.

Has everyone eaten?

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of organisations, big and small, that are tackling hunger one donated meal at a time.

Let’s Feed Bengaluru (founded in 2015) is a collective similar to RHA, collecting food from donors once a month for distribution to slum-dwellers in the city’s Tilak Nagar and Kundanahalli localities.

In Aurangabad, Maharashtra, businessman Yusuf Mukati started the Roti Bank in 2015. Nearly 350 people deposit freshly cooked rice, rotis, vegetables and meat at this bank every day. Mukati manages to feed at least 500 daily: not just the homeless, but also those who cannot afford a square meal.

What is common to these volunteer-driven initiatives is the absence of monetary contributions. “The one rule in the RHA is that no chapter can collect money. If someone wants to help, they can give what is most valuable — their time,” says Ghose.

Clearly, internet penetration, disposable incomes and dispensable food have proved handy in sparking off and sustaining this new movement of ‘giving’. Equally, however, the failure of public policy and governmental action in tackling hunger has contributed in no small way.

A 2015 FAO report shows up India’s failure in achieving the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on hunger — namely, halving the population of undernourished from 1990 levels. As many as 194 million go hungry in India, the report says, the highest in the world. In Pakistan, the number of hungry has risen 44 per cent over the 1990 figure of 28.7 million.

Institutional efforts at course correction include Tamil Nadu’s Amma Canteens (Amma Unavagam), launched in 2013, which make a meal available for as little as ₹5; and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s similar initiative a year later.

The Central government in 2013 introduced the Food Security Act to ensure “access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices”. The aim is to provide subsidised foodgrains to 75 per cent of the rural population, and 50 per cent of the urban population under Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), “thus covering about two-thirds of the population”.

This policy will, however, benefit only those who hold ration and Aadhaar cards; for the rest in need, it is only organisations such as the RHA that can step in with a plate of food.

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