Street Food Festival 2014
Inauguration by Sanjeev Kapoor, the famous Indian chef
As the leading platform of street vendors of India, the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) has always tried to champion the causes of the street food vendors and help them assert with their acumen and brilliance of profession. For NASVI, promoting street food and cementing the identity of street food vendors is closely linked with preserving and promoting the social- cultural diversity of place and region.
Time and gain NASVI has demonstrated its proven capacities in organizing Street Food Festivals with a pool of efficient street food vendors and teams of committed staff and representatives. The managerial capacity and the outreach planning have always turned events highly successful. The Street Food Festivals organized by NASVI in the national capital Delhi in November 2011 and December 2012 evoked huge response of the citizenry and attracted a large number of crowds.
The Street Food Festival organized in Delhi on 20-22 December, 2013 saw footfalls of thousands of people from cross sections of society. It was inaugurated by the Union Urban Development Minister Mrs. Girja Vyas, Government of India. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of Delhi Government also put up the stalls and supervised the maintenance and hygiene of the stalls. Besides citizenry of Delhi, many parliamentarians, intellectuals, journalists and government officials also joined the festival. They all enjoyed the festival and eventually got charmed and conquered by the variety and aroma of the street foods. A team of Singapore Tourism also joined the festival and invited NASVI to participate in the World Street Food Congress.
Building on the experiences of last street food festivals held in Delhi over the last three years, NASVI is going to organize a grand Street Food Carnival in Delhi from 25 to 28 December, 2014. This winter delight set to attract thousands of foodies across India over three days will have master street food vendors of different regions of India and other countries with their signature dishes having age old stamps of culinary tradition and culture. Not just a unique battle of tastes, the carnival will be an advocacy event with a difference wherein the executives and functionaries of tourism, food processing, health, labour and employment departments and boards, and representatives of culinary institutes, development agencies, media and academic institutions would join together to share, acknowledge and celebrate the potentials and the possibilities of street food vending sector.
With the encouraging crowd in National Street food festival 2013 we are planning to have more stalls this year. This year we are putting more than 200 stalls from 25 states of India. This festival is unique initiative to present the diverse food culture served by street food vendors. The authenticity and peerless taste is proved by the stamping crowd across the society. Street food has great potential to attract national as well as international tourists. Indian food has always been a mode of attraction and street food being the best in taste can be a very good method to promote tourism .support from Government of India to take our initiative a step ahead by supporting us to make it a viable tourism prospect.
We would like to organize this year with tourism department as a major stake holder to give message that street food can be a very good source of attracting tourists who would carry a marvelous experience of gastronomic variety at low cost but healthy and hygienic.
In the last one year we had tried to mainstream street food vendors through various trainings and exposures. We are closely working with FSSAI (Food safety and standard Authority of India) to get them registered under food safety Act 2006. We are trying to mainstream street food vendors through our well defined vision PROFESSIONALISING, PROMOTING AND PROVIDING BETTER OPPORTUNITIES TO STREET FOOD VENDORS.
It will be an occasion to reassert that the grassroots street food entrepreneurs play a wonderful role in poverty reduction, employment generation and enterprise building, and they make cities charming for all.
Sanjeev Kapoor, the famous Indian chef and entrepreneur who stars in the TV show Khana Khazana, the longest running show of its kind in Asia, will inaugurate this year’s food festival.
