Context Recently, as a part of the ‘Satyagraha series’ organized by SPI, I got an opportunity to listen to Dr. Shreekumar, who is an organic farmer in the south, and “student and practitioner of sustainability and just resource use”. He has a BTech (chemical engineering from Karnataka Regional Engineering College), Ph.D. (Indian Institute of Science), and has taught at NITK[Read More...]
Our young ones are our primary social responsibilities; we must ensure the planet is able to support them in the best health and spirit by maintaining a bountiful life, which was our responsibility when we lived in small groups that were able to know every one’s character. However, it’s impossible to know the character of every one in a large[Read More...]
There are many kinds of social movements and it is understandable that social movements are often preoccupied with their immediate demands which are likely to be of a very specific nature. At the same time there are some very basic concerns and priorities which should be common to more or less all social movements on an enduring basis. No matter[Read More...]
Stop. Think. To me, the first word that comes to mind is development. Cambridge Dictionary defines development as the process by which something grows or changes and becomes more advanced. In Economics, development is irretrievably tied with persistent growth with the most popular metric for measuring such growth: GDP.
As the attention of people of India is focused on agriculture in the context of the farmers’ movement, this is a good time to initiate a debate on exactly what sort of alternative system of farming and food the country needs. It is not enough to criticize the existing system, we should be clear about what we actually need. If[Read More...]
By win, I mean win it all, not win a little. Win a new world. Win new defining social institutions. Win an end to injustice, inequality, subordination, and domination. Win an end to class, gender, sex, race, and all hierarchies that position some people above and other people below. Win equity. Win solidarity. Win diversity. Win self management. Win today’s[Read More...]
Ok, you all should know about blood transfusions. Watch any of the hospital shows on the boob tube and see how, in dire emergencies, they rush to do blood transfusions. Well, guess what? The depression level financial crisis for us working stiffs is here. Now, many of you still do not feel it, and thank goodness for that. Others among[Read More...]
Making political sense of the world can be tricky unless one understands the role of the state in capitalist societies. The state is not primarily there to represent voters or uphold democratic rights and values; it is a vehicle for facilitating and legitimating the concentration of wealth and power into fewer and fewer hands. In a recent post, I wrote[Read More...]
The world has been changing fast, and so must social movements, to keep up with the emerging challenges. The most significant aspect of the fast-changing world is the emergence of very serious threats to the basic life-nurturing conditions of earth, and in keeping with the recognition of this as the most important issue, social movements must prepare in many creative[Read More...]
Although there is increasing recognition among many eminent scientists and learned scholars ( and of course many environment and disarmament activists ) that the world is now faced with a very serious human-made survival crisis, which has no comparison in the history so far, no credible road-map has yet emerged to avoid this many-sided, very serious crisis. We have some[Read More...]
