Jai Jagat Campaign Plan for 2022

 Jai Jagat Campaign Plan for 2022

Presented to Association of Jai Jagat International

Draft (November 7^th, 2021)

The 2022 Jai Jagat Campaign has begun to draw attention to ground-level activities with groups practicing local economic activities. Beginning in Southern India, the Jai Jagat campaign plans to highlight the ongoing initiatives in the coming year and then to do so in other parts of India and beyond. Using local resources for a sustainable production and lowering excessive demand for luxury goods, is a significant response to the current climate crisis with the aim of reducing carbon emissions to 1.5 degrees by 2030.

There is undoubtedly an emergent economy, not only in India but across the globe that is operating in parallel to the mainstream fossil-fuel based economy. It focuses on locally sustainable, socially inclusive, and nonviolent production, exchange, and consumption. Although these social enterprises, cooperatives, and neighborhood initiatives remain small, disparate, and often invisible, there is a potential for their expansion through greater local activity. To ensure the space for that expansion, there is a required support and solidarity from different civil society actors, and government organizations.

One of the recommendations that has emerged in various discussions with producer groups and other like-minded actors, is that different narratives need to be developed by the local groups and captured on various media platforms for their amplification. As the current social media tends to promote a global market-place that is competitive and profit-centered, we require media that promotes people and planet. Nonviolent approaches in social media is less on branding and more on narrative; it requires a shift from commerce to community.

The Jai Jagat campaign is working to launch a platform of NVcom which shifts the emphasis of commerce to community. Although people are acting to buy and sell, there is greater attention to a sustainable local production, and the judicious use of local resources. This relates to value and how long-term value is created. Current production is based on creating value that is continuously growing with large amounts of disposable waste. The shift to greater sustainability is possible if there are numerous community-based enterprises/cooperatives/neighbourhood approaches that involve large numbers of people to be involved. To enable a positive environment of cooperation means to shift economic exchange away from scarcity to abundance towards creating peace.

There is an emergent economy that exists, right under our noses, and the plan for this year’s Jai Jagat campaign, is to bring them together giving their exchange as growing a nonviolent economy. This will grow side-by-side of the larger global fossil-fuel based economy because it is responding to large populations particularly in the global south, that remain in the informal sector and need avenues for their own development. Gradually, and as reiterated in the presentations of the recent COP 26 discussions, governments are calling on global economic interests to wean themselves off fossil fuels. If this does happen, there will be greater partnership with local and global actors in an emergent and sustainable economy.