Radical Alternatives to “Progress”
Across India and around the world, communities are resisting destruction and reclaiming their right to shape their own futures. Shrishtee Bajpai, researcher and activist with the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, reveals how local struggles for self-determination connect across cultures and what is being done to weave a 'pluriverse' of possibilities rooted in social and ecological justice. Highlights include:
How Shrishtee's upbringing as an upper caste, urban Indian girl living along the river Ganga shaped her search for personal freedom and ecological and social justice;
How her work with Indian village communities resisting ecological and social destruction helped her connect academic critiques of feminism and development to lived realities;
How she challenges oppressive systems while also interrogating her own privilege and colonial inheritance;
Why creating a 'pluriverse' of diverse, locally-rooted alternatives is essential to move beyond the dominant development model and progress narrative;
Why the Global Tapestry of Alternatives supports 'radiating out' values and lessons rather than 'scaling up', which risks destroying the important nuance of local context;
Why strengthening communities’ imagination, confidence, and self-determination is central to her work;
Why the Rights of Nature movement must de-emphasize the perspectives of NGOs and governments and center the voice of local communities with long-standing connections to their environments;
How profound experiences with the more-than-human world and with story-based community ritual sustain her work.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
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Shrishtee Bajpai (00:00:00):
If we are saying that we don't want this kind of destructive development, what is our alternative to it? Yes, we know that there's crisis and we kind of know what are the roots of those crisis as well. This is alienation from nature and resulting in the systems of oppression. But let's think beyond that. Can we actually rewire ourselves and think about how do we come out of those systems? And this is not something that we need to do in an abstract way. We need to go and talk with communities who are already doing it and in some ways actually inform what they're doing. And the more we tell these stories of our collective origin and emergence, the more we will be able to challenge the colonization that has happened through the dominant story.
Alan Ware (00:00:41):
That was Shrishtee Bajpai, researcher, writer, and activist. In this episode of OVERSHOOT, we'll talk with Shrishtee about her work with communities in India and around the world who are resisting the growth machine and creating radical alternatives for a more socially and ecologically just future.
Nandita Bajaj (00:01:07):
Welcome to OVERSHOOT, where we tackle today's interlocking social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. On this podcast, we explore needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on earth. I'm Nandita Bajaj, co-host of the podcast and executive director of Population Balance.
Alan Ware (00:01:33):
I'm Alan Ware, co-host of the podcast and researcher with Population Balance. With expert guests covering a range of topics, we examine the forces underlying overshoot, the patriarchal pronatalism that fuels overpopulation, the growth- obsessed economic systems that drive consumerism and social injustice, and the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all of life. And now on to today's guest.
(00:02:12):
Shrishtee is a researcher, writer and activist working on themes of interspecies justice, earthy governance, and systemic transformations. She's a member of Kalpavriksh, an environmental action group in India, and coordinates Vikalp Sangam alternatives confluence network that researches, documents, networks around systemic alternatives. She's the core team member of Global Tapestry of Alternatives and part of Emerging Futures Visionaries program of Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She also serves on the executive committee of Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. You can often find her looking at birds, insects, bees, and shamelessly photographing them. She can also be found trying to sing, scribbling thoughts, and collecting books to read. And now on to today's interview.
Nandita Bajaj (00:03:03):
Hi and welcome to OVERSHOOT, Shrishtee. We are so thrilled to have you joining us from India.
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:03:09):
Thank you. Very glad to be here.
Nandita Bajaj (00:03:12):
And we know that you work very closely with Ashish Kothari, whom we had on as a guest last year to talk about the harmful impacts of the so-called development agenda of the past a hundred or so years. And you and Ashish, along with the global community of activists are involved in what we see as a very important and inspiring effort to weave together the various alternative practices and local and regional groups that are challenging global techno-industrial capitalism. So we are really excited to learn about your unique and transformative contributions to this critical work. And we also want to add that as an English-speaking podcast, there is an inherent bias towards listeners in the global north and those of us in the global north need to be aware that most of the interesting action in resisting the global megamachine is taking place in the global south with groups that are trying to maintain their more nature and people connected lifeways. And we know you're going to be highlighting some of that work today for which we are truly grateful. So we can begin with a little bit of a background about you. I've heard you say that part of this resistance work is to recognize that the personal and political are not separate, but intimately bound together. How did your personal history and experiences bring you to this work?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:04:44):
Thanks, Nandita, and thanks Alan for having me here. I guess a lot was informed of where I was born and to whom I was born. So while I was born in a north Indian city called Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, and it's a very interesting city, which I only realized later when I read more about the history and this colonial struggle that it was part of and then the left movement that came about and that diminished that I realized that there was so much that was happening. It also made me realize that sometimes we are informed by many things only to later realize that a lot of that was shaping us, but we don't necessarily pay so much attention to the place that we belong. I was born to wonderful people. I think my parents were and have been an important source of thinking about and challenging the systems that I was born in, a very patriarchal society, an extremely castes society, and also in not so economically well off situations where my parents taught us from the very start, all three of us, my elder sister and younger brother, that we will have to resist the systems that we are so much surrounded with. And that resistance will begin at your home, your own family, with your own relatives, just pushing for example, for just this narrative that what will you get if your daughters become educated? Why invest so much money in their education? And my parents actively resisted that. And I think the sense of rebellion, the sense of questioning what was around and not just accepting came a lot from my own mother, my own father who questioned the systems that they were in very much. And while I was in my school and studying, I got involved in some really interesting things that only now makes sense of why I was there.
(00:06:33):
And my school was very much involved in this work around helping communities. And I was very interested in these things, going and teaching in underprivileged schools and trying to do something about the world. And I think one very interesting thing that happened with me was to travel to Maharashtra as a young student and learning from Baba Amte who was at that time alive. And for the context of your audience, Baba Amte has been one of the very important activists and social forces of transformation. The movement that they were leading was called Universal Solidarity Movement, which was to promote interfaith dialogue. And at that moment I didn't realize what was the importance of talking about different religious communities to understand each other and their differences and accept that radically. But now I understand what an important work it was to do it with young people, that we don't see each other by the religions and the identities that we are born in, but rather really accept and overcome those differences and celebrate actually those differences.
(00:07:36):
So those little experiences were informing a lot of my thinking. But also being born in the Indian plains was a very interesting journey for me, living along the river Ganga. It was also such a massive internal inquiry. And when I always went to the river and saw the destruction that we have done to her, while we call her a goddess, I felt that there was something completely schizophrenic about human existence. I mean, I can articulate this right now, but as a young child and a young woman, I couldn't really make sense of it. And it always made me question why would we do that to the Earth? And I still grapple with that question. It's not like I've found an answer for why we humans do that and why we are our own enemies. But that question informed a lot of my discomfort, imbalance, anxiety that I felt, the pain that I felt but couldn't place my finger over it, that what exactly is happening to me.
(00:08:35):
And then the only way that I could feel that this could end was to get out of that city. Whereas a woman, my body was repressed. I was so conscious of who I was just because of the gender I have and in a sense that always questioned that if I'm a woman, I can only do this much If I am here, I can only explore this much. And so for me, getting out of that city became so important. And the questioning of also what it is to be a human in these times when you are actually challenging and grappling and dealing with gender, caste, religion and so many identities that you come to acquire because of the systems we have put in place and going out of the city and exploring that sense of freedom, in some ways tokenistic freedom, was very transformative. I realized so much that as a woman I could do and I could relate it to a lot with what was happening around me.
(00:09:29):
But I guess the most transformative was to actually go and work with people in communities after college when reading about feminist theories and reading about development and critique of development and everything was happening. And what was not happening was that this internal journey or some internal reflection of actual experience was missing. And so all of that was making sense, and it was of course very awakening. But I think only after college when I started working with Kalpavriksh, different networks that, Vikalp Sangam, that I got involved in that things started moving inside me. Everything started making a bit of a sense of why we are doing what we are doing. And from not being able to really grapple with this question of why is the river so polluted to actually working with communities who were standing up resisting against the destruction that was happening to their forest, to their rivers, realizing that the only way we can change things is by taking action, and the action informs reflection and it's not separate.
(00:10:33):
So it was in those processes and of course the love, warmth, resilience of people that I worked with, that a lot of my own journey got informed and is being informed. I'm still journeying through that and unlearning a lot of things that I've learned in my life and being challenged and questioned in many ways. And I come from a privileged caste, and I only realized when I was in the villages that how much privilege I also carry wherever I go in these spaces. Reading about development and critique of development always made me when I worked with communities that in my body, in the way I dress, the things that I carry, I carry development with me. So as I critique modern forms of destruction and stuff, it's me who carries this. So all of these experiences were very crucial and they continue to be that in so many ways we embody oppression and we carry it in ourselves in different ways. So it has always been this journey of changing questioning, challenging the systems, but also internally interrogating how we embody all of this. While we say that we want democratic governments, how democratic are we in our everyday lives in our decision-making spaces?
Alan Ware (00:11:47):
Well, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, that's quite a journey of internal change and external, seeing the personal as political, as you're carrying yourself into those villages and realize you're also carrying your caste and your whole background with you. And now for years you've been working with the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. You're a co-facilitator with them. And that's an initiative that as the website explains, aims to build solidarity networks and strategic alliances among diverse local, regional, and global alternatives. And in today's context of overlapping ecological, social, economic crises, how are you understanding, you and others in the Global Tapestry, the root causes of the global predicament?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:12:36):
Let me go back to maybe my journey into alternatives because at that time when I was in college, I was reading people like Arturo Escobar and people who were really challenging the idea of development itself. And along with the critique of development and then bringing the elements of how we reimagine life in itself. So there's no one solution to a problem, but there's so many other ways. And I was doing this in Indian context, going and working with several communities who along with resistance were actually building processes of transformation. And only during that work I realized that it is such a difficult conversation to have among social movements and civil society groups in India because the critique of the system itself was so profound and powerful and that needed so much action that people were caught in that. And we were never able to move beyond that.
(00:13:30):
If we are saying that we don't want this kind of destructive development, what is our alternative to it? So I was always in the debate and discussions around, yes, we know that there's crisis. Yes, we know that there are problems, and we kind of know what are the roots of those crisis as well. This is alienation from nature, many articulated patriarchy itself is one of those early reasons of alienation and resulting in the systems of oppression. But let's think beyond that. If those are the things that have already created the systems of oppression, can we actually rewire ourselves and think about how do we come out of those systems? And this is not something that we need to do in an abstract way. We need to actually go and talk with communities who are already doing it and in some ways actually inform what they're doing by whatever capacity or space or knowledge or linkages we can bring.
(00:14:22):
So I entered into these spaces actually having understood and spoken about the crisis enough, but rather now to speak about alternatives itself. And my one most important space of learning was with this community in Central India where they had been protesting against a mining project for now I think about 35 years, but realize that critiquing that we don't want jobs from the mining company is not enough. We need to show that we can, with own capacity and our own governance systems, can actually create more sustainable jobs for our community where we protect the forest, we manage conserve, celebrate our forest, our cultures, our indigeneity, and are also able to feed ourselves. And in that process also transform the systems that we are challenging outside, but also within our communities like giving space and the movements being led by themselves or also young people being part of it, or people with disabilities being part of the decision-making.
(00:15:23):
So multiple elements and dimensions of transformation. And then during one of those processes, we had this very interesting conversation between this community in central India with the community in Venezuela, and there was translations happening in English, Spanish and Hindi and Marathi, so four languages. But what was really powerful, Alan and Nandita to realize in that conversation was that the most powerful thing that one can do is to create this dialogue between people because despite so far away and despite such different contexts that they come from, their struggles were similar. They were also fighting against mining companies. Venezuela community was thinking about life plans. These guys were thinking about other transformative processes. They were trying to similarly think about forest protection and management and the worldviews that the forest is alive, it has agency, were informing all of their work. And after the conversation was over, this group that we were working with in central India said that we don't feel alone now that this is something that we are doing.
(00:16:32):
There's so many communities who are doing this, they're not even like us. They don't speak our language. They're so different. And it enabled them to feel that they're not crazy people who are resisting these systems and they're not these uniquely oppressed communities. There's so many and that they can stand with each other. And so for us, it was increasingly, of course, people like Ashish, Arturo Escobar, in different contexts were also thinking about these things. Like we had this network of Vikalp Sangam trying to bring together many such communities across India together. Similarly, they were thinking in Colombia and Mexico, and we also have colleagues in Southeast Asia. So these were the things that were already happening in different parts of the world trying to do similar things, which is to bring different people and communities to now talk about alternatives and pluriversality and articulate that in different ways.
(00:17:24):
And so for us, it became important to also explore this beyond borders and how do we create people to people connections, solidarities, that are not state-controlled or state- facilitated or big institutions facilitated, but actually led by people themselves and supported to activists, researchers, and people like us who can provide ways to weave much of the tapestry in some ways. So that is where the Global Tapestry of Alternatives work came about, which was to discuss with different networks across the world about the need of a process like that, because we also had World Social Forum, and thinking about why World Social Forum failed - what were the problems with it, and realizing that it was again, caught only in discussing about crisis and not really the alternatives. So thinking about a space that can actually now talk about alternatives with of course, the present context of crisis so visibly on us, but can now have more intersectoral, cross-sectoral dialogues, and we are not caught in our silos and can weave the possibilities that already exist in the grassroots and can strengthen and create more spaces for them to actually come together. So that was the effort, which was where Global Tapestry of Alternatives came about. And so with the whole recognition that the root of the crisis is from the alienation from nature, patriarchy, capitalism, statism, and all of that, but now beginning to talk about the challenges that we face are common, but the way we come to those challenges or responses to those challenges can be many, many, and they're very diverse. And can we celebrate that diversity and different ways of being and dwelling in this world?
Alan Ware (00:19:06):
Yeah, I think it's encouraging that they felt supported. I guess I kind of underestimated how unsupported and overwhelmed they probably felt in Venezuela and Central India when they're going up against those mining corporations. And as we've talked about with different economists, the whole neoliberal classic economics view that sees human nature as very self acquisitive, utility-maximizing, that ends up turning nature into money in one form or another, and that that's become kind of hegemonic and that these both communities had more sacred relationship to their forest. What kind of solutions did they end up coming with in terms of jobs as alternatives to mining? And how did they balance that with the sacredness of the forest and not over-exploiting it?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:19:56):
Well, I can share in more detail about the community that I worked with. So one very important element of this whole struggle was to gain control over their forest rights. So when the British came to India, they basically came up with this really oppressive law called the Indian Forest Act, which had the very essential premise to it that rest of nature, forests, are resources that can be extracted for any state use or railway use or whatever. And so that enabled much of the forest under control of the forest department, and forest department became this big landlord that controlled most of the forest that was traditional forest for the indigenous people. So after many, many years of struggle of people struggle and groups that worked with them came very transformative law called the Forest Rights Act, which basically tried to undo the historical injustice that had been done to the forest-dwelling communities, especially the indigenous communities.
(00:21:00):
And what it enabled was communities to one claim community forest rights, which is basically rights over their traditional territories. It also enables getting control over the habitats, so the entire territorial rights as well for certain communities who have lived in these landscapes for many years. And it also enables individual families over having lived there for centuries to gain control over their individual lands. So this has been a very important transformative act in the history of environmental struggle and Adivasi rights struggles in India. So they can actually decide that this is the conserved area where they will never ever go and cut any forest, and then there's a part of the area which they will use to sell certain non-timber forest produce to the outside market. So basically what they did was to take control over the means of production locally. And for that they had to federate, collectivize, because no one Gram Sabha or village assembly can do that.
(00:21:59):
So what they did was 87 village assemblies came together, formed a federation called the Maha Gram Sabha or a large village assemblies federation. And each village was represented by one man, one woman in this executive committee. So basically they created an alternative system of governance. They also stopped a lot of smuggling and that used to happen from their forest. So they created their own alternative to the state institutions' management and also the sale and production of this forest produce and ensuring that then communities of course will have to go and migrate and do some work outside, but mostly then come back and not stay in the cities, come back, then do their farming, do their forest work. So in sense, have much more flexibility than say many other communities in India where they're completely dependent on labor in big cities. So now again, all of this that I'm saying is not at all smooth or easy for these communities.
(00:22:58):
There's a continued state repression, there's continued violence by state in various forms to the local activists. So this is happening in a lot of suppression and oppression, but it continues to happen is what the inspiration through the processes. And in fact, during COVID times when a lot of us were suffering in the cities, this community was able to manage along with many others that we know through the work that we have been doing, were able to combat these crisis in a much better way because they had a lot of collective savings, they were able to offer that to a lot of young people who had gone out and were coming back to the villages, because they had this social capital and a bandwidth to protect them from all the insecurities that the cities created at that time. So again, a very indicative example of when communities are self-strengthened, they can respond to even these crisis in a much more resilient way than a lot of us who live in cities and are so dependent on the market for our basic needs like food and nutrition itself, which they were able to manage a lot being fed through their lands and forests, dependent on it for their basic needs.
Nandita Bajaj (00:24:07):
And that's where the question about the idea of bringing this model to other communities in its different forms really comes into play. And your group also emphasizes the idea of a pluriverse, a world of many coexisting worldviews in contrast to a single development story, the progress narrative that has been dominating much of the world. How does framing change through ideas like the pluriverse and tapestry help us reimagine the transformations we need? And you gave this beautiful example of the Maha Gram Sabha and how they're doing it, and it'd be great to hear how it's happening in different parts of the world, especially from this lens.
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:24:57):
I think the idea of a world where many worlds fit something that the Zaptista movement from Mexico has been articulating for the last 35, 37 years. And it's a powerful idea for one to say that there's no one singular way of being in the world. There can't be one single religion, one single gender, one single flag, language, way of making sense of the world. So embracing that because there's no singular homogenized way of being or thinking in the world, we have to work through the differences. So it is not to say that all of us have to think in the same way about the world problems, but can we respect each other for having different views and different ways of understanding and yet be in dialogue with each other? And while we were thinking about what we should call Global Tapestry of Alternatives, in some of the earlier conversations emerging from the Vikalp Sangam process here in India, we were thinking of it to be Earth Vikalp Sangam, global confluences processes. And there were so many words going around and then we wanted to come up with something that communities across the world could relate with.
(00:26:04):
And what we found was something that is so common among many communities is weaving. If we go to any community here in India, weaving is such an important act of sensemaking of the world, of philosophizing, of generally living and passing it down to their daughters, understanding nature. And that's something that's across the world. And the motives, for example, of this Naga community in northeast India, so similar to communities in Oaxaca in Mexico. So there's something very beautiful and evocative about weaving that people immediately relate with. But it's also something which is very powerful in terms for us as GTA because again, as we have been articulating that you can't weave a tapestry until many threads with different colors come together.
(00:26:52):
And tapestry is not something that is already existing. It can only be weaved when people come together and it's a verb, it has to be happening, it can't be stagnant. So for us, it was important to have that very centrally there. We really struggled with the word global because of the critique of what we were up against, this idea of global, because we wanted to center it at the local. We still grapple with it, but we felt that at some moment we also have to recover the words that have been misused or in some ways also reassert our use of them. And we in our first assembly that happened in 2023 actually had this big tapestry that all the participants had come from different parts of the world weaved together. So that was also a powerful collective work of different weaving that people brought through of course the work that they've been doing, but also the knowledge that they carry of weaving and art and act and craft itself.
Nandita Bajaj (00:27:49):
Those are really powerful examples. And I also want to put a plug in on this note about your documentary that came out last year called Churning the Earth, which gives a lot of the visual examples of communities doing the weaving and having these meetings and trying to imagine different alternatives going against this very universalized aspect of modernity where there's only one way of knowing and there's only one language that's trying to become the dominant language and the hyper-individualization that's come with modernity. And I wonder to what degree is this hyper-individuation is getting in the way to the degree it's kind of penetrated within these communities, through globalization? Are those aspects showing up? And if so, how are you or the communities themselves trying to work with that?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:28:52):
It's a very delicate and a difficult process to hold because even when we go with this critique of modernity, it's not to say that what people should aspire for or that they should continue doing what they're doing, because that would be hypocritical for someone like me to do. Because in many ways I enjoy the privileges of being connected to the global community right now, speaking to both of you, being able to speak in English language, having had the privilege of the education that I've had, and then here in Ladakh I would say that, oh, you're protecting these beautiful landscape, continue being here. We need you to protect this landscape. So I think in that sense, it's not for me or any one of us to articulate that or represent communities in that sense, but really create a space where they can actually articulate what they want.
(00:29:42):
If that is being part of the systems that we enjoy, the privileges of be it, but the autonomy, the sovereignty to be able to decide what happens to my life, to my territory, to my land, I think that self-determination is very important for our work and that most communities have lost. So even when a community is saying, like the nomadic people here in Ladakh where I'm speaking to you from, is saying that, no, I see the beauty of your world, but I still want to be on my land, continue to do and live this life. Of course have some basic amenities that my forefathers didn't have, but I want to protect and be in this land. This right is being taken away from the communities and this is what we are saying is wrong, and this is what we are up against, that I must have the right to say and decide what happens to me and my land and the communities that I belong to.
(00:30:38):
And we were in this gathering that global tapestry had organized early this year in February of communities across the world who are actually articulating radical forms of democracy. Nonhle, who's a well-known activist from South Africa, said a very powerful thing that has stayed with me. She said, this Shell corporation that is mining the Amadiba coastal areas said that we have come here to give you jobs because you are poor. And so once you get the jobs, you'll come out of your poverty. And what these guys said, this notion of what is poor is in itself that we are challenging if we are living off our lands, being able to feed ourselves, we are able to live subsistently, enjoy dance, have this beautiful ocean where our forefathers have lived, where their souls still continue to live, how are we poor? So being able to even decide what is wellbeing and development for us is not possible for so many people and communities across the world.
(00:31:38):
So for us, it has been important to stress that can we ensure that people have the right autonomy and sovereignty to decide that and control over their everyday lives? And not to suggest that this or that way would be better for them, but they decide for themselves what's good. But in some ways also nudging and creating spaces for communities to be able to question these systems and highlight that the connections of these systems, for example, this whole green energy extractivism and especially through that carbon credits, is something that communities are unaware of this big massive thing that's coming to their landscapes without necessarily being able to see the implications of it at global scale. So I think that's where some of our role is around demystifying some of these things and creating spaces for clarification for communities where they can of course understand some of these very complex, not so easy to understand linkages between different crises that we are facing today, but more or less for us, what is central is that can people share their experiences that somehow are connected but also very diverse and can learn from each other in terms of strategies, in terms of action, in terms of being able to think about lessons and creating and facilitating those spaces more actively.
(00:32:57):
But the penetration of these systems is obvious. It's happening and it's happening at such an accelerated pace that sometimes our efforts seem very little. One sees quite often of communities actually often being divided on these issues as well. It's not always a uniform voice that we don't want mining or we don't want this green extractive project. So that also of course complicates. And at that moment we have to take positions as to say that this is going to impact your land for a long time. This is going to impact biodiversity and also the possibility of your own future.
Nandita Bajaj (00:33:29):
That makes a lot of sense. It also reminds me of something that Ashish had said during the interview, which was something very similar, that sometimes we can have a very limited notion of what traditional ways of knowing or being are that they are static, whereas everything within modernity is evolving. But that all those ways have evolved over time. And one aspect of this global tapestry is the rights of nature movement. And you have been very nuanced about the word rights when it comes to self-governance and also governance of the land. The concept can be alienating to people who have lived in relationship with nature for millennia and have considered the land and the rivers and the forest to be living beings. And would love to hear a little bit about how you are seeing the rights of nature being in confluence with the work of indigenous communities who have seen themselves as in relationship with nature.
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:34:37):
In terms of just saying that this idea that rest of nature is alive and that it has agency and that we are always in communication has been part of the worldview and part of everyday being of a lot of communities in India and also across the world. And for me, again, the same community that I worked with in central India, that was an evident part of their work. When they started the whole resistance process, for them it was not just about protecting the landscape for themselves and their livelihoods, but really speaking about and speaking for in some ways the birds, animals, the spirits of the forest who had nowhere to go. And that's what one of the elders in the community said, Samaru Kallu, when I asked him, "why don't you go to a nearby city and get these jobs that they're offering and rehabilitation that they will give you?"
(00:35:28):
And he said, "but where will the words of the forest go? Where will the spirits go?" And so the struggle was not about human community, but the more than human community as well. And they inhabit that space collectively. So when some of us got into really looking at rights of nature movement that was emerging early on in Latin America, but then in different parts of the world, and then when especially a judgment came about here in India, we started questioning, okay, what's really about it that can enable maybe possibly some sense of protection for say the river Ganga, which was the Indian judgment about granting rights to river Ganga as a living entity and living being. And so for us it was critical to question, what does this right really mean? Do we change the way we have been exploiting and destroying the river? Or is it just some good judgment that one judge wants to give?
(00:36:19):
And what does it really mean in terms of transforming the systems itself? So from the very start of looking at this issue, we wanted to bring some critical aspects of one that we need to articulate rights in a much more holistic way, that second, we need to talk about the systems of governance and democracy itself. It cannot be by the state who becomes the voice of the river or it cannot be some experts or NGOs or institutions and involving the local communities themselves and the diverse worldviews with which they relate to the river. And the third is that rights of nature is a powerful articulation in the present western legal context that all of us are living in, where it challenges the notion of nature as a resource, but that's not going to solve all our problems. It's a means towards an end. It's not an end in itself.
(00:37:09):
And so we really need to talk about a much more robust, much more broader and intersectoral idea or a concept that is embedded in people's worldviews and something that Ashish and I are trying to articulate as earthy governance and interspecies justice, which is to say that many communities continue to, like in Ladakh right now where I'm here, and in several parts of the world where communities' governance systems have evolved by listening and by following the rhythms and moods of the natural world, following the laws of rivers, mountains, snow, and ecosystems that they belong to. What can we learn from that? It is not to say that we extract, that we replicate, copy paste, but really to see, understand what does it mean to govern when we listen to the river, when we understand the mountains and the snow and the glaciers and how the winds move, how does that then inform how do we take decisions?
(00:38:04):
And communities have done that always and have lived with that. And how can we now then think about our institutions in that aspect? So some of our work through GTA is trying to say that when we are talking about bringing the more than human in decision-making or about rights of nature, it's really first questioning the systems of oppression because we can create a seat in the table, and that's what a lot of corporations in the west are trying to do now, but that's not enough. We don't need to bring a koala into the room. We need to be in the forest. We need to understand the ecosystems that we inhabit and learn from them. So it's really rewiring ourselves and bringing such movements and groups together to think about these issues for our own local context, but also how can we actually see that emerging in different worlds and have more powerful articulation, which is of course connected to rights of nature. But that's also bringing in the questions of autonomy, self-determination, and struggles of self-governance at the very heart and the root of it because we don't see them separate. And that's what usually happens when we are just maybe looking at this from a very legal perspective. So that's what has been the work around exploring these dimensions within GTA.
Nandita Bajaj (00:39:19):
And then along those lines, you've cautioned against the idea of scaling up alternatives as it risks replicating the same impersonal and bureaucratic dynamics of modern development models. And instead you and GTA promote the idea of radiating out, spreading diverse, locally-rooted initiatives horizontally in a way that respects local autonomy while also contributing to broader systemic change. Could you share both what values and practices you hope to radiate out and give some examples of how the scaling out works in practice?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:40:03):
Sure. I guess one scaling question has always been a question that comes about when we talk about alternatives that, okay, these examples are great, you have thousands of these from India, from across the world, but how can we scale up? How can we to change the systems of oppression to change things that we are facing, the crisis, to really challenge it we need these at a larger scale. And our response to that is that if we do something at such a large scale, it'll lose the uniqueness, it's place-based response, it's informed idea of the local reality that it is responding to. And along with that, it has so many dangers that scaling up would lead to which is homogenization. That one solution can solve all the problems, which is the very idea we are up against. So in a sense, what we are trying to talk about is radiating out, out-scaling and really creating the possibilities for communities to, one, share their different processes and highlight that different context will need different responses.
(00:41:12):
Something that say Ladakhi communities need to do to combat water insecurity would be very different from what say a community in Maharashtra needs to do, but they might be interesting insights about how these communities are doing it here and how Maharashtran communities in southern India can learn from them. And so through GTA, but also through Vikalp Sangam process, we have been documenting various examples and trying to work with our contributors to really essentially highlight some key lessons and key values that were part of those processes. So not necessarily saying that all of these things are similar, but rather that there is some essential values and principles that people believe in. Say for example, a value of solidarity, respect for nature, for commons, for self-governance, self-determination, why is ecology important for us, or why cultural democracy is important to us? What is controlled and being able to take decision about our lives important to us, and giving a bit of a framework to have these discussions as well, which is not top-down, but something that is of course owned and co-owned and adopted by communities as they see deemed fit.
Nandita Bajaj (00:42:22):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Can you speak to some examples of where these values might conflict? Because it is a global tapestry and because you are encouraging this pluriverse of ideas and ways of knowing, do you see conflicts within which values are privileged over others, and how are these differences where they do exist being addressed?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:42:48):
Yeah, I think this crafts example has been a very interesting one. So this is in relation to western India in state of Gujarat, where craft revival has been a very powerful transformative experience for communities where the local artisans who belong to the marginalized caste were able to revive the traditional crafts method, were able to revive even organic cotton, which was completely eliminated from their craft lives for a long time. And so they were able to do that and because they revived everything, the final product was a very expensive product. And so that was something that could only be consumed either by very rich Indians living in big cities or Europeans outside. And so that enabled a dialogue within the communities that there could be something that is actually transformative for the community, that is asserting some of the essentials, that we take control over our craft and not some outside artisans, that we create livelihoods for local artisans.
(00:43:48):
So it is changing the economy of the region to actually localize economic distribution and democracy and asserting our own traditional knowledge, but in many ways also maybe contributing to ecological footprint. But these conflicting values, this can very well happen in any transformative processes that communities are part of. But what we want to also highlight through some of these dialogues is that it's not to say that transformations are a static processes or that they will happen and then they stop, but it's a continuous, it's like life. So as soon as you start doing some work, it reveals itself that there's something that needs to change within the communities. With the Zapatistas when they were doing the whole work of trying to challenge the Mexican state, they realized that the voice of the women was missing. So as we start moving to action, there are different dimensions that maybe we have never thought about, that when we are asking from justice from the state, we need to think about justice within our communities itself.
(00:44:50):
And so what for us is important is that when that conflict happens, that space for being able to have a dialogue between these conflicting values and see what is a core value. So justice is a core value. So if you're seeking justice from outside, justice also needs to be ensured internally. So if you're talking about respect for nature and really protecting the earth, then the economy that enables this to happen needs to rethink about where is our dependence? Have we stopped wearing organic cotton? And what cotton are we wearing? Are we wearing polyester or are we wearing cotton? Is self- subsistence an important value for us or just getting more and more money? And that's why for both GTA and we call process and several such processes that are part of GTA and alternatives, it is important that we do these dialogues not in our silos, but break those silos and bring in say, people who are working on localized economies, people who are working on water issues, people who are working on say biodiversity, people who are working on green energy in a common platform so that we are able to see sometimes contrasting values in some of the work that we are doing, but able to negotiate and dialogue around these things because that's where the processes of understanding each other's worldviews and realities begin and also accommodating possibilities of working together.
Alan Ware (00:46:11):
And you coming from a more privileged background, going into these more indigenous groups and as you said, trying to find the common values, the core values, because there will be value conflicts. And I'm sure there are a lot of things some of these groups are doing that you don't necessarily agree with, but it's not your place to lecture to them. And that's refreshing that a lot of times the urban, secular, educated intelligentsia historically have been the theorizers that then go and tell people how to do things. And that was kind of universalizing modernity. And as we saw with communism, often it was an intelligentsia that was imposing certain things on other people. So this is an essential corrective to that. And part of that is decolonization, which is a really hot topic and hot conversation happening around the world today. Not just in terms of political independence of course, but decolonizing our minds in terms of the knowledge systems and the cultural identities. And we've talked with other people about this, but at some point all of us were indigenous and we're conquered by some empire, and we had to learn how to adapt and get along in that new state and compromise and learn their education system and other things. So we've all been kind of colonized at some point, but what do you see as some of the most essential features of meaningful decolonization today, the institutions and even within ourselves, and what does that process look like for you personally?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:47:41):
Yeah, it's really a hot topic and in most conversations that are happening more globally, this topic comes up in different ways. And sometimes I find myself answering this question as to how do we decolonize ourselves? And it's not like it's an easy answer to give, and it's not like I have that answer also, but I'll share only my reflections that have emerged from different conversations and work with people. And for me, one is at this moment to just unlearn all the colonization that has happened and finding that unlearning in everyday basis, in everyday work that I do and the way I think and the way I make sense of the world. And I must admit it's not easy because even identifying how and in what ways I have been colonized is in itself a journey. An important element of decolonizing is language itself. I was asked this question of what is the language I think in?
(00:48:39):
And when I'm doing my internal conversation, and right now, thankfully I can still say that I think in my mother tongue and not English language, but even to be able to continuously assert language as a way of making sense because that's an important sense of our identity or sense-making of the world or communicating with the world. For me, language is something that is an essential element of decolonization because it has so much wealth and just a whole worldview that is composed in languages. And Ganesh Devy, who's one of the most well-known linguists in India, has documented 787 or something like that, living languages right now in India. And there were many more that have been diminished, and with that diminishing of languages is diminishing of cultures and worldviews that people have lived with. So for me, one important way of decolonization and asserting of our worldviews is through language, and that is where a lot of knowledge is.
(00:49:41):
But I feel there's something that colonization has done to many of us who are educated around so invested in education, and that's something which is a gut and marrow level, just so internalized that's going to take a lot of unlearning, just the theoretical frameworks that we use. Gandhi was able to think beyond those theoretical frameworks, and that's why I think he was such a powerful thinker, because he challenged some of those frames that the West offered. But pretty much even now, we think in those frameworks, and for me, important challenge is to how think beyond those frameworks. And it's not an easy challenge to work with, but something that we are continuously grappling with. And the third maybe, which again is something that is emerging from the work that have learned through communities is storytelling. In none of the community meetings or discussions that I have been part of ever, it has been about a structured dialogue.
(00:50:39):
It's always about stories and stories are such an essential way of sensemaking and world-making and meaning-making for communities across the world. Just like this whole resistance that I spoke about from central India, whenever we sat for the meetings, it was some story that will begin about this sacred forest who is this sacred deity that something about a village. So stories are such an important way that people have made a sense of, and we have been told a dominant story that this is how we will be developed, this is how the modernity will look like. This is how the stages of progress would be that all of us need to go through to be called progressed. And so we need to tell a lot more stories that counter this dominant hegemonic story that has been the story for all of us. And the more we tell the stories of how communities relate or think, that turtles are their ancestors or forests or the seas where their ancestors live, or that their souls are carried by the river, and if you dam the river, you dam our stories of origin as well. These are the stories that need to be told. And the more we tell these stories of our collective origin and emergence, the more we will be able to challenge the colonization that has happened through the dominant story. The more we create openness for imagination, for dreaming that can possibly take us in different directions than the one we are going into clearly.
Nandita Bajaj (00:52:04):
And I appreciate your example of using your thinking language as a basis for seeing to what degree are you thinking within colonialist terms or not. And it reminded me also just when I was going to a lot of these westernized Indian schools in India, I mean, my friends and I would get punished if we were caught speaking in Hindi, which is my mother tongue, in the hallways or in the classrooms. So it was completely ground out of us. And then even within our home, because there was such a focus on English in order to be educated, in order to be progressive and have a chance at having a career, English was privileged as well within our home. And it's only through recent experiences and conversations like with you that I've started to push myself to speak Hindi whenever I can and trying to keep that alive within my knowledge system. And you've also described collective future visioning as perhaps one of the most important elements of weaving the global tapestry of alternatives. You were just speaking about the role of imagination in doing that. How do you describe that process of collectively imagining, and why is that so important?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:53:25):
Well, one reason is an obvious one because when a lot of us are in struggles, we don't have the confidence that our lives can change, and that penetration to our individual sense of hope and distorting that sense of hope, I think is a powerful way that capitalism and systems of oppressions have taken that confidence away from individuals, but also as a collective. And that's what I think a lot of young people these days are facing, that this inevitable end of life and world is going to come. So there's no other way to survive, but to just accept it. But in some sense, not taking an action, but rather accepting it as an ultimate way of being is a dangerous thing because then it takes away power to dream and power to imagine, and it's a very, very hard thing to do because yeah, the overpowering reality of crisis is so immense that often we get caught in that.
(00:54:23):
So for GTA, it is important that how we can nurture or create the possibility for people to dream and continue dreaming even when the world is so much full of crisis and problems that we are facing. And that dreaming one can happen, of course, through seeking inspiration from so much that the nature is always offering, but also a dreaming that is grounded in so many possibilities of action that communities are doing at the grassroots all over the world, but especially facilitating some sense of collective power and collective work that we can do towards that dreaming. So for instance, when maybe the example of that would be something that emerged from our February gathering in South Africa, and people there suggested that let's create a space of people's academies. So there are so many academies that exist in the world, which is only about intellectuals and doctorates and people who are knowledge holders, but can we create a space for all of us to think about what is our knowledge, what is our sense of politics?
(00:55:26):
What is our sense of democracy? And just a space for reflection and dreaming about if we were to clearly think about radical democracy, in some ways it is being expressed by various communities, but in some ways it is still inadequate. And so what does that imagination look like? It seems small and it seems, well, how will you do when there are children dying and genocide being televised on your screens all the time? But I think it is still powerful because that's where a sense of hope and collectivization comes that, okay, but let's still come together and talk about what would radical democracy really look like? What can Kurdish movement learn from, say, a movement happening in Indonesia or Myanmar where also the elements of ecology are so alive, and what is this democratic confederalism? A very strong or decentralized federalist system of democracy can inform some of the work that's happening in Myanmar where they're working towards Salween Peace Park. So it's creating those possibilities, but also going beyond that of learning from each other to think of radical imagination. And that's what we are trying to work towards.
Alan Ware (00:56:34):
As you were mentioning, things are moving so fast that the weaving and the visioning, all that takes patience and deliberation, and meanwhile, social political events can move very quickly. But I think the imagining you're talking about is very much needed in a world where, as Margaret Thatcher said, the TINA, there is no alternative to liberal democratic capitalism. And we're seeing a more chaotic options of what's possible. So there are alternatives with right-wing populism. And so we're seeing some bad alternatives that aren't based so much on imagination, visioning in a positive sense, but more fear and scarcity and trying to get what's mine or what can be used to create greater security for myself and mine. So yeah, I think we always have a response. We're always responsible for our response to some extent. We can respond to the crisis in different ways. And I think it's great that you're looking at how to create a more positive imagining of what's possible. And you've also written about some of the powerful personal experiences you've had in places like Ladakh and the Indus River that you've walked quite a bit of and you've immersed yourself in those natural environments and with indigenous communities and other communities. Could you share a few of those experiences and the feelings they've evoked?
Shrishtee Bajpai (00:58:01):
Yeah, so many. I think if it wasn't for my experiences with being held in many beautiful ways by the more than human world, I don't know if I would have been able to sustain and do the work that I'm doing and just maybe not suffering the burnout that I see so many of my fellow activists and other people suffering from. And somehow I find so much hope and so much nurturance from different experiences that I've had of being in nature. The first time, for example, when I saw the weaver bird weaving its nest, I just couldn't believe that all my 20 years of my life had not seen this gorgeous bird and weaving this beautiful intricate nest. And I just couldn't believe that there was so much beauty possible in this world, or sitting under a tree and seeing this paradise fly catcher moving like a feather.
(00:58:54):
But I think in more profound ways, being able to learn from nature of how rivers, how mountains, how animals, and how everything that's around us is always continuously doing what they're supposed to do, despite all that's happening to them because of us. And that was a good reminder for me that the sun continues to shine, the mountains continue to stand, the winds continue to blow. And so I must do what I'm supposed to do on everyday basis as my act of what I feel is right and my responsibility to the world and the space that I require. And yeah, I think that has only happened because of observing and being in nature and actually being in company of many of these people who have learned so much from nature and have always informed my own journeys. So I've been very, I think, privileged to have had that access and being in spaces and landscapes such as these that I am right now, but also many others.
Alan Ware (00:59:54):
I've felt similar feelings of overwhelm and awe and wonder in nature and appreciation for the complexity that will go on. And there's some comfort to take in that. You've also experienced some collective ritual, the power of other people doing things together that are typically not done in industrialized society so much?
Shrishtee Bajpai (01:00:18):
Well always I think in so many communities, rituals are such an important way of dealing with many illnesses of an individual, but also illnesses of the society. One very powerful ritual I attended near Oaxaca in a small village, the land where communities were trying to revive their traditional systems of healing. And they said that the community believed that if an individual falls ill in a community it is not about that individual, but something that has gone wrong with the community itself. So the ritual involves the whole community and not just that individual. And in our modern world and lives, it's always about an individual. So in many rituals, the sense of collective is such an important focus, and that collective also includes the rest of nature. And it is not just about humans. So it is about deities of the forest and the mountains and snow. And so there's a collective responsibility towards them and mediating through different ways, but really listening to what's happening in those landscapes.
Nandita Bajaj (01:01:24):
And I also really appreciated the experiences you share both collectively, but individually of the feelings that it evokes for you. And it kind of made me think about your practice of decolonizing your mind because so much of how we've been taught to not just think and act, but also feel and what things should evoke, what kinds of responses are still coming from a very modern way of thinking. To weep when looking at a mountain or in the company of trees is considered to be weak and irrational. In one of your essays, you talk about that it brought you to tears, the experience of nature, but you were so clear about saying, "I don't wish to look for a reason as to why I felt like weeping. It is futile to find reasons to have felt moved". And that is so powerful because in a huge way that is the most authentic response, the most kind of pristine response before that response was ground out of us.
(01:02:31):
And I feel like the conversation we had about decolonizing also means allowing ourselves to be humble in moments of overwhelm like this and to let ourselves go when we are in the presence of something as beautiful and as rich and grand and huge as nature. I think this has been an incredibly full interview. We want to thank you so much for being with us today, for bringing so much wisdom and for constantly challenging yourself to do the work and being an inspiration for us to follow in those footsteps, to challenge our own dominant thinking as we engage in this transformative radical work. Thank you so much, Shrishtee. This was a really amazing interview.
Alan Ware (01:03:22):
Thank you.
Shrishtee Bajpai (01:03:24):
Thank you, Nandita. Thank you, Alan. I must say this is one of those conversations that I will remember for a long time and I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much for your questions.
Alan Ware (01:03:34):
That's all for this edition of OVERSHOOT. Visit populationbalance.org to learn more. To share feedback or guest recommendations, write to us using the contact form on our site or by emailing us at podcast@populationbalance.org. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us on your favorite podcast platform and share it widely. We couldn't do this work without the support of listeners like you, and we hope you'll consider a one-time or recurring donation.
Nandita Bajaj (01:04:03):
Until next time, I'm Nandita Bajaj, thanking you for your interest in our work and for helping to advance our vision of shrinking toward abundance.
