My experience at Barefoot College

In school, we had an extra subject called G.St (not the taxes, don’t worry) General Studies class. In G.St classes, we used to discuss various socio-political issues, our class structure contained theatre activities, group discussions and debates. On one such, class we learned about, this place called the Barefoot College in the village of Tilonia, Ajmer district, Rajasthan. The programs are influenced by the Gandhian philosophy of each village being self-reliant. Barefoot College takes students, primarily women from the poorest of villages and teach them skills such as installing, building and repairing solar lamps and water pumps without requiring them to read or write. The skills that one would actually require in life, like making solar cookers. Somehow, this place sounded so interesting and the whole class was inspired enough to decide that we all want to go to Tilonia and meet Bunker Roy, the founder of Barefoot. Our teachers were supportive enough and in December 2014 we left for Tilonia.

It was an experience of a lifetime, we meet various kinds of people, people like Aruna Roy and Bunker Roy who have been actively involved in social and political activities, Panchayat leaders, RTI activist. And women who make solar panels and who explained us light reflection and refraction better than all my physics teachers and classes had. It is not just the physics that I learned there that stayed with but also the stories of the RTI activist and villagers who had fought the system, the corruption and death to stand for the principles they believed in. I am leaving a link to Barefoot’s website but I hope you go there. I don’t think we can learn about transformative changes without looking at Barefoot College.

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Radical Ecological Democracy

Throughout the course, we dealt with problems we are currently facing due to the ecological, political and economic framework. Now, it’s time to look for alternatives One such alternative solution, that we study in depth, is the radical ecological democracy or RED. It is a socio-cultural, political and economic arrangement in which all people and communities have the right and full opportunity to participate in decision-making, based on the twin fulcrums of ecological sustainability and human equity. In my opinion, Ashish Kothari’s idea of the RED Utopian future is too far-fetched and I personally do not see that happening anytime soon. But still, let’s discuss RED in some detail.

RED is about continuous and mutually respectful dialogue amongst human beings, and between humanity and the rest of nature. It is also not one solution or blueprint, but a great variety of them. These would include systems once considered valuable but now considered outdated and ‘primitive’: subsistence economies, barter, local haat-based trade, oral knowledge, work-leisure combines, the machine as a tool and not a master, local health traditions, handicrafts, learning through doing with parents and other elders, frowning upon profligacy and waste, and so on.

Principles or tenets of Radical Ecological Democracy

Principle 1: Ecological integrity and limits The functional integrity and resilience of the ecological processes, ecosystems, and biological diversity that is the basis of all life on earth, respecting which entails a realisation of the ecological limits within which human economies and societies must restrict themselves.

Principle 2: Equity and justice Equitable access of all human beings, in current and future generations, to the conditions needed for human well-being – socio-cultural, economic, political, ecological, and in particular food, water, shelter, clothing, energy, healthy living, and satisfying social and cultural relations – without endangering any other person’s access; equity between humans and other elements of nature; and social, economic, and environmental justice for all.

Principle 3: Right to meaningful participation The right of each person and community to meaningfully participate in crucial decisions affecting her/his/its life, and to the conditions that provide the ability for such participation, as part of a radical, participatory democracy.

Principle 4: Responsibility The responsibility of each citizen and community to ensure meaningful decision-making that is based on the twin principles of ecological integrity and socio-economic equity, conditioned in the interim by a ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ in which those currently rich within the country take on a greater role and/or are incentivised or forced to give up their excessively consumptive lifestyles in order for the poor to have adequate levels of human security. This principle should also extend to the impact a country has on other countries, with a ‘do no harm’ component as a basic minimum component.

Principle 5: Diversity Respect for the diversity of environments and ecologies, species and genes (wild and domesticated), cultures, ways of living, knowledge systems, values, economies and livelihoods, and polities (including those of indigenous peoples and local communities), in so far as they are in consonance with the principles of sustainability and equity.

Principle 6: Collective commons and solidarity Collective and co-operative thinking and working founded on the socio-cultural, economic, and ecological commons, respecting both common custodianship and individual freedoms and innovations within such collectivities, with interpersonal and inter-community solidarity as a fulcrum.

Principle 7: Rights of nature The right of nature and all its species, wild or domesticated, to survive and thrive in the conditions in which they have evolved, along with respect for the ‘community of life’ as a whole.

Principle 8: Resilience and adaptability The ability of communities and humanity as a whole, to respond, adapt and sustain the resilience needed to maintain ecological sustainability and equity in the face of external and internal forces of change, including through respecting conditions, like diversity, enabling the resilience of nature.

Principle 9: Subsidiarity and eco-regionalism Local rural and urban communities, small enough for all members to take part in face-to-face decision-making, as the fundamental unit of governance, linked with each other at bioregional, ecoregional and cultural levels into landscape/ seascape institutions that are answerable to these basic units.

Principle 10: Interconnectedness The inextricable connections amongst various aspects of human civilisation, and therefore, amongst any set of ‘development’ or ‘well-being’ goals – environmental, economic, social, cultural, and political.

Adapted from: Peoples’ Sustainability Treaty on Radical Ecological Democracy http://radicalecologicaldemocracy.wordpress.com/ (accessed January 2013).

More Readings :

http://www.greattransition.org/publication/radical-ecological-democracy-a-path-forward-for-india-and-beyond

 

Models of Transformative Change

 

There are initiatives made by communities, civil society organisations, government agencies, and businesses to tackle the challenges of unsustainability, inequity, and injustice. Some of these initiatives address the symptoms of the problem instead of attempting to confront the underlying structural causes of the problem such as capitalism, patriarchy, state-centrism, and other inequities in power, these initiatives are known as reformist. Whereas initiatives that attempt to address the root causes of inequality and unsustainability are called transformative or radical alternatives.

Imagining Transformations

Vikalp Sangam or Alternatives Confluence is a series of meetings and discussions that have brought together different organisations and people working on real alternative transformations to the problems we face. They have proposed a ‘framework’ to distinguish between transformative initiatives and those that offer reformist solutions (i.e. those that strengthen the problematic status quo such as predominantly market-based or technology-based mechanisms). The framework also helps people to recognise internally contradictory issues and enable the initiative to take steps towards a more comprehensive transformation.

Guidelines to recognise transformative initiatives:

Ecological integrity and resilience

• maintaining the eco-regenerative processes that conserve ecosystems, species, functions, cycles;
• respect for ecological limits at various levels, local to global;
• an ecological ethic in human endeavour

Social well-being and justice

• Lives that are fulfilling and satisfactory physically, socially, culturally, and spiritually;
• Equity in socio-economic and political entitlements, benefits, rights and responsibilities;
• Communal and ethnic harmony;
• Non-hierarchical divisions based on faith, gender, caste, class, ethnicity, ability;
• Non-discriminatory, non-exploitative, non-oppressive relationships

Direct and delegated democracy

• Decision-making starts at the smallest unit of human settlement, in which everyone has the right, capacity and opportunity to take part, and builds up to larger levels of governance by delegates that are accountable to the smaller units of direct democracy;
• Decision-making is not simply a ‘one-person one-vote’ but rather consensual, respecting the rights of those currently marginalised.
• The centre of human activity is the ‘community’ not the state nor the corporation. (A community is a self-defined collection of people with a common or cohesive social interest. This could include an ancient village, an urban neighbourhood, the student body of an institution, or even a ‘virtual’ network of common interest).

Economic democracy

• Individuals and local communities (including producers and consumers, wherever possible combined into one ‘prosumer’) have control over the means of production, distribution, exchange, markets;
• Localization is a key principle, and larger trade and exchange is built on it on the principle of equal exchange;
• When useful, the private property gives way to the commons, removing the distinction between owner and worker.

Cultural diversity and knowledge democracy

• Plural ways of living, ideas and ideologies is respected
• Creativity and innovation are encouraged
• Generation, transmission and use of traditional and modern knowledge are accessible to all

1 Reproduced, with minor modifications, from ‘The Search for Alternatives: Key Aspects and Principles’, http://www.kalpavriksh.org/images/alternatives/Alternativesframework4thdraftMarch2016.pdf.

http://www.vikalpsangam.org/

Transformative Change Case Study

The case study given to us was the solar farming as a cash crop in Gujarat. We watched a video talking about the initiative taken by the government to promote the use of solar panels to pump groundwater instead of the diesel-powered generators. The initiative certainly has ecological and economic benefits. It gives the farmers in the villages the autonomy to work independently without relying on others for resources like energy. The farmers in Gujarat who have been using the solar panels have set up a cooperative that allows people to sell the surplus energy to buyers. This acts as an alternative form of income for the farmers, giving them more economic stability.

Although the solar panels are subsidized by the government, one of the possibility might be that only the village rich may have access to this technology. And the new resource might just reinforce the pre-existing caste and class hierarchies in the villages. Therefore, this technology may not bring any social and cultural changes. So, this initiative is more on the reformative side than the transformative.

To know more :

Solar Energy, a Cash Crop for Gujarat Farmers

http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/06/20/gujarat-sunshine-crop_n_7627340.html