By Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Hans R. Herren, Peter E. Kenmore, Independent Science News
If anything is to be learned from the template of Bt cotton it is that much of biotechnology in agriculture is an exercise in linear thinking, of reductionism, and of unexpected consequences.
By Ashish Kothari, Pallav Das, Empowering Nonviolence
We’re committed and excited about our attempts at cooperation between academics, movement activists, creative thinkers, and practitioners of alternatives to challenge the ever-tightening grip of corporate fundamentalism on the economy and the environment.
By Tom Shillam, The Conversation
Seventy years after Gandhi’s assassination on the streets of New Delhi, Ramachandra Guha’s new book, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-48, reopens a familiar debate around his legacy. What was Gandhi’s message? What were his politics? What can we learn from him today? And is he still relevant?
By Frank Kaminski, Mud City Press
Fair-Weather Brother is a portrait of the many environmental, economic and social challenges plaguing India today. The novella’s author, who goes by the pseudonym Pogoat, lives in India and thus knows of these issues firsthand.
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
Historians have spilled a lot of ink on the question of how capitalism supplanted feudalism, but what will happen in the future if by design, default or disaster our present capitalist society is supplanted by a lower energy alternative with more people devoting themselves to the agrarian arts?
By Namrata Poddar, Resilience.org
What I find interesting—and infuriating—about a self-proclaimed “global media” and its storytelling about Indian eco-awakening is a myopic diagnosis of and solution to global environmental crisis, aka climate change, through a perception of time seeped in historic amnesia.
By Allen White, Jayati Ghosh, The Great Transition
But it is also evident that youth everywhere, forced to deal with a much more insecure and uncertain future, are also more open to creative approaches to change that recognize and seek to address various inequalities and injustices. I find evidence of such creative thinking among my own students, for example, along with a willingness to think beyond the immediate future to the medium term for change. That thinking and willingness gives me hope for the emergence of a Great Transition.
By Rahul Goswami, Resilience.org
The fabled Valley of Kashmir, encircled by the mountains of the Western Himalaya, is a high-altitude wetland in northernmost India. Battered by record floods in 2014, its people must renew their knowledge and practices, of craft and seasonal sustenance in a unique hydraulic environment.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
The possibility of a new Cold War between Russia and the United States and its NATO allies brings with it the spectre of nuclear war.
By Subhankar Banerjee, ClimateStorytellers.org
The two countries I know best are India and the US. I spent the first 22 years of my life in the former, and the following 24 in the latter, where I continue to live. Recently I returned home, after spending three months in India. The combination of what I saw there in plain view, and what I see here in America, may shed some light on—why we have arrived at the climate impasse.
By Bharat Mansata, Alex Jensen, The Economics of Happiness Blog
Save’s way of farming and teachings are rooted in his deep understanding of the symbiotic relationships in nature, which he is ever happy to share freely (and still very enthusiastically!)
By Brian Emerson, Ashish Kothari, Local Bites
Ashish Kothari provides a sobering account of the social and environmental impacts of globalized development in India and highlights a diverse range of localist alternatives taking place in communities throughout India.
