Mahua as Gift and Commodity
Rahul Srivastava
The talk centres around the risks involved when expanding the trade of a sacred product, which is also a source of basic income for indigenous communities in a threatened environment. The product is mahua, a traditional alcoholic spirit made from the flowers of the mahua tree, produced and consumed mainly by indigenous communities of the Indian subcontinent. It exists in a larger social context that largely disapproves of drinking alcohol yet manages to sustain a massive commercial economy around industrial liquor. Thanks mainly to a colonial-era policy framework that benefits a category called 'Foreign-made Indian Liquor' and limits the commercial growth of 'domestic-liquor'. What happens when a company is formed abroad to expand the commercial potential of such a product? What are the risks and possibilities?
Rahul Srivastava did his M.Phil in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 1994, after a masters at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a bachelor's from St. Xavier's College (Mumbai). His M.Phil thesis was on 'The Organic Food Industry in Britain; Environmental Concerns Influencing its Production and Consumption'. He subsequently taught at Wilson College, University of Mumbai, for seven years and then became the co-director of a research collective based in Mumbai founded by Arjun Appadurai, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research). His first publication was co-authored with Rudolf Heredia; 'Tribal Identity and Minority Status, The Kathkari Nomads in Transition' (Concept, 1994). He co-founded an urban practice collective with Matias Echanove - urbz.net, in Dharavi, Mumbai, which now also operates from Geneva, Bogota and Paris. He uses his background in social anthropology for participatory urban planning projects at urbz. His co-written book, with Matias Echanove, 'The Homegrown City', is slated for publication this year with Verso, London. He has also published a novel for young adults (Scholastic, 2012, 2019) and is a screenwriter. His co-written short film 'The Feast' won the International Jury Award at the Clermont-Ferrand festival in 2024. He co-created a company in France, to make and sell Mahua spirit in Europe in 2019 where he also manages the urbz, Paris office.