Digesting urban space: dietary wellbeing in Mumbai slums

Policymakers and industrial developers in Mumbai face the mounting social and spatial needs of a constantly increasing urban population. Slum dwellers account for up to half of the city’s inhabitants, and are the socioeconomic group most vulnerable to deficient and exclusive governance practices. This article explores the social and psychological determinants of ‘dietary wellbeing’ from the viewpoint of cultural ideology and temporality intersecting and a relational perspective on the (re)production of urban space. Urban policy directives and a deficient Public Distribution System negatively impact the ability of slum dwellers to access quality food and avoid dietary illness, thus reinforcing shifting cultural norms within dietary preferences and notions of success. The prevailing urban ideal established by Mumbai governance authorities contradicts the real modes of spatial and temporal legitimacy inherent to slum spaces and populations, whose dietary wellbeing is at stake.