Ashish Kothari
Ashish Kothari is a founder-member of the Indian environmental group Kalpavriksh, and helps coordinate Vikalp Sangam and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. He taught at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, and served on the boards of Greenpeace International and Greenpeace India.
The Crisis of Globalization and the Search for Alternatives
Moving towards genuine self-reliance in times of war and climate collapse. The world is reeling from the crises generated by the war in the Gulf, the disastrous climate and ecological collapse, deepening inequalities, genocides, and other mass atrocities. Multilateral institutions like the United Nations appear to be unable to do much about these. Like any…
If All Life Mattered, What Would Decision-Making Look Like?
In April 2013, the Supreme Court of India delivered a historic judgement recognizing the cultural, religious and spiritual rights of the Dongria Kondh Adivasis, an Indigenous community residing in the Niyamgiri Hills of Odisha state in eastern India. The community fighting against bauxite mining in their sacred landscape had articulated that “our way of life…
The Flower of Transformation
With growing news of war and conflict, ecological and climate catastrophe, stark inequalities, health crises related to both poverty and affluence, the authoritarianism of governments, and the increasing stranglehold of mega-corporations in all aspects of our lives, it is understandable that there is deep anxiety about the present and future of humanity. On the brighter…
What does self-reliance really mean? Amazing stories from India’s villages
Not so long ago, Dalit women farmers in Telangana used to face hunger and deprivation. Today, they have contributed foodgrains for pandemic relief. Farmers on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border have been sending organic produce to Bengaluru even during the lockdown. And Adivasi villages in central India are using community funds to take care of migrant…
We will survive the Coronavirus. Will we survive ourselves?
What an astonishing slap in humanity’s face, this coronavirus. But the silver lining is that it is also a rude wake up call. I say ‘silver lining’, for at the centre of this is a massive humanitarian crisis of illnesses and deaths – and for working classes who cannot switch to ‘online’ work, whose workplaces…
From Livelihoods to Deadlihoods
In India, economic development and modernity have transformed livelihoods into deadlihoods. They are wiping out millennia-old livelihoods that were ways of life with no sharp division between work and leisure, and replacing them with dreary assembly line jobs where we wait desperately for weekends and holidays. Economic progress, we are told, is about moving from…
Towards Alternatives: Radical Ecological Democracy (Part 2)
Local resources, locally managed Localisation, a trend diametrically opposed to globalisation, is based on the belief that those living closest to the resource to be managed (the forest, the sea, the coast, the farm, the urban facility…), would have the greatest stake and often the best knowledge, to manage it. Of course this is not…
Towards Alternatives: Radical Ecological Democracy (Part 1)
The third in our Planet Local series, this article is excerpted from Globalisation in India: Impacts and Alternatives by Ashish Kothari. Kothari will be speaking at the Economics of Happiness conference in Bangalore, India on March 15th. Readers can learn more about Kothari’s work by listening to the latest episode of Local Bites, ISEC’s podcast program….