Brief Note on Nonviolent Economy

 Brief Note on Nonviolent Economy

For the 4^th and 5^th December Preparatory Workshop

 

In traveling through Europe in September 2021, it became evident that there was a strong response to the climate emergency and transition economy in many cities and municipalities. In about 70 cities, there are various actions that are being taken up by communities in cities including: converting roads into bicycle paths and public transit laneways; local management of waste recycling; creation of community gardens; production of green jobs; using local energy units and so forth.

The pervasive question that European friends had asked, was what people were doing for transition in India..? Unfortunately, large and smaller cities alike in India are in the grip of an aggressive mainstream economy that has focused on building multiple lane highways, fast rail, upgrading of ports and airports that are mostly based on thermal power, in an all out effort to raise the standards of living.  Even though there are inputs for smart cities, towns, and villages, these seem to largely favour urban populations. For this reason, farmers have been expressing the neglect of the national government in giving a minimum support price,  and have been advocating against laws that privilege corporate interests. This has led to a yearlong strike of farmers on the outskirts of Delhi. What farmers are struggling against,  is in fact a larger malaise where natural resources are carted out of rural areas for the development of urban and fast-paced growth leaving rural populations impoverished and faced with depleting livelihood resources.

So,  in looking at the transition in India, the development trajectory is livelihood patterns that maintain biodiverse resources on which large populations depend. There is a long history of local use of resources, with local processing and marketing and this has always been a segment of the economy.  Throughout the southern part of India, there is a litany of experiments such as: natural farming, organic agriculture, traditional seed collection, traditional medicine, village industries, local eco-tourism, bartering of products, and so forth.  These have been seen as micro-, social enterprises and not as an economy.  This is also due to the predominant mainstream economy and the narrative that these micro-initiatives are unable  to scale up, meet larger demand, without quality control and so forth. Such a narrative is counter-productive for the continued existence of small-scale and often collective producer organizations that are serving an important role in the transition economy.

In light of the Jai Jagat campaign, which is bringing together the concerns of grassroot communities along with the values of nonviolence, we are proposing in making a three-fold intervention. Firstly, to bring groups together so that each can evaluate the other’s  capacities and build horizontal networks. Secondly, to link local production in line with regenerating the environment; and thirdly to determine how to create incentives for production based on  local market demand.