Laughter and the chirping of grasshoppers mingled on a mild August morning as several young women, members of the Aaniiih and Nakoda tribes, searched for sweetgrass, running vegetation through their fingers as they tried to determine whether they held satiny sweetgrass or […]
Why we are boycotting the UN Food Systems Summit
In September this year, the United Nations will host a Global Food Systems Summit in New York. The organisers of this summit are pitching it as a crucial debate of the decade which is to define the future of agriculture. […]
Young farmers in Ladakh: the future of our food
Ladakh – high on the Tibetan Plateau at the northern extreme of India – is the place we call home. The vast majority of Ladakhis are villagers, who have, for centuries, provided for most of their physical and emotional needs [...]
Community-oriented life at human scale
The documentary Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh (John Page, Chris Breemen, Helena Norberg-Hodge & Eric Walton, 1993) provides an excellent introduction to the local, human scale traditions in Ladakh, and how local communities have been affected by the industrialised notion […]
Lockdown in Ladakh
I returned to my village in Ladakh when the Prime Minister announced the first lockdown in late-March. I ended up spending the whole lockdown period in the village assisting my family with various agricultural and pastoral tasks. This was the […]
In Peru, ancestral values shine during COVID-19 crisis
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Peruvians are facing exceptional challenges as individuals and communities throughout the country confront job losses and food shortages in addition to the virus itself. However, these difficult times have an upside, in that […]
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. […]
Locking Down Leviathan
The streets of Jayanagar, a residential area in Bengaluru, are strewn with spring flowers. Yellow copper pods, lilac crape myrtles, pink-and-white honges and orange gulmohurs blaze overhead and underfoot; vitality and senescence mirroring each other. The normally hard surfaces – […]
Post-pandemic development: a Ladakhi perspective
A week before the announcement of the Janata [public] Curfew slated for March 22, 2020, I spoke with a 43-year-old close relative in her village in Leh, Ladakh, by phone from Delhi. Around that time, the news of rising infections […]
Iowa, Pseudo-Events, and Hyperreality
The Iowa caucus affair last night was a masterclass in hyperreality. The relevant facts are as follows. It was the long-anticipated kickoff to the primary season in an ever-expanding election cycle that now seems more or less co-terminous with the […]