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 – kerb, pavement, road and concrete – are softened by fallen petals and the duff of […]
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 from the novel coronavirus coming in from China, Italy and Iran were ominous. Ladakh had […]
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 […]
Tosepan: Resistance and Renewal in Mexico
Since the mid-1980s, Mexico has been a poster child for globalization. Through free trade treaties and structural adjustment policies imposed by international financial institutions, the country has been “liberalized” – opened up to unfettered corporate investment and imports – to an extent matched by few other countries. Though the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is […]
Old Mother Forest
I live across a small stream from an ancient rainforest in Wayanad, Kerala. It has a constancy that’s baffling, appearing more or less the same to me for all the years I’ve been here. The forest sustains. As do you and I. Tangled beings brought together by strange and bewildering feats of alchemy. No matter […]
Reading Tagore to Become Human
In 1922, Rabindranath Tagore published one of his most important works, the play Mukta-Dhara. The story, rich in symbolism, is a simple yet powerful one. A child of mysterious birth is found abandoned by a mountain waterfall. He is adopted by the royal family and raised as the crown-prince, Abhijit. As he turns into a […]
Mending a History of Discrimination through “Person-to-Person Reparations”
Although systemic economic forces make it difficult for anyone to survive as a farmer — and even harder to acquire enough land to start a farm — institutional racism and other forms of discrimination have made it all but impossible for people of color. That’s why Soul Fire Farm, a people of color led community farm near Albany, New […]
Farewell to Development: An interview with Arturo Escobar
Arturo Escobar is co-editor of The Post-Development Dictionary and author of Design for the Pluriverse. He was interviewed by Allen White, Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute, sponsor of the Great Transition Initiative, where a slightly longer version of this interview first appeared. Allen White: You have argued that the conventional understanding of development […]
Will the Poor Always Be With Us?
It’s a familiar story. On his final journey toward Jerusalem, Jesus stops in Bethany to eat at the home of Simon, a leper. A woman enters with an alabaster jar of expensive ointment; she breaks the jar and pours the ointment on his head. Her gesture invokes the fury of some of those present. The […]
Adivasi Economics and Re-awakening the Indigenous Mind
When the East India Company set up in India, the commodities they originally traded included hundreds of unique artifacts made in India, including textiles whose quality has never been surpassed. As the EIC set up a subsidiary called the Government of India for collecting revenue to send back to London, the aim gradually shifted to […]