Session-5 Programme

Knowledge in Development Discourse, and People’s Movements

Working Group Members: Umashankari Narendranath (Convener), OB Ramasubramanian (Co-Convener), Rajeev Sangal, Rahul Goswami, Sunil Sahasrabudhey, Veena Joshi

Schedule: 21st Feb 2025, Friday 11:15 am – 1.30 pm

This session is designed as a combination of presentations and panel discussions. Following is the tentative schedule.

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Presentations: Emergence of the Neo-Local? (45 mins)

The concept of the ‘neo-local’ is a phenomenon that is emerging in the world today, as against the globalization that was seen as a panacea for economic progress in the 90s. After three decades of economic reforms, India has witnessed organized extraction, exploitation and furthering of the pre-existent inequities and inequalities even more acutely. Epistemic injustice is the hidden truth in plain sight during the period of globalization. Can this emerging local movement provide an opportunity to reclaim the place for the commons knowledge?

 

• Loka Vidya- Peoples Knowledge Movement and Local economy - Chitra Sahasrabuddhey (15 mins)

• Towards a new imagination of ‘Development’ - Baskar Manimegalai (15 mins)

• Radical Ecological Democracy, Rights of Nature -Shrishtee Bajpai

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Dialogue: Farming, Food, and the Knowledge question (60 mins)

The area with the highest impact of the knowledge injustice committed today is in the domain of farming and food systems. Farmers’ economic and social status, his/her knowledge and culture have become an afterthought in the definition of food production and food security. Reports of multi-lateral organizations such as FAO and other international organizations on farming is necessarily censored through the lens of speed, mechanization and global capital interest. What has been and can be the place for farmers’ knowledge in discourses of food, and farming in the future?

 

• GM crops, vanishing agri-bio-diversity and the need for preservation of indigenous knowledge in agriculture - Kapil Shah (30 mins)

• History as a Present Continuous – Knowledge questions behind the Farmers’ Movement - Girish Sahasrabudhe (30 mins)

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Reflective Talks: Violence in (& as) Development (45 mins)

Development as a process has aggravated prevailing injustices in society, it has also created new ones. Understanding the role of knowledge holders, their current challenges and how do they see the future is essential today, even as ''sustainability'' drives a new discourse. Will this be even more violent than the previous phase?

 

• Food Systems, Women, and the Knowledge question - Saraswathi (15 mins)

• Redefining gender in the Knowledge discourse – Tashi (15 mins)

• Built-in Epistemic violence in Development discourse - Rajni Bakshi (15 mins)

• Interaction with the entire panel of presentations (15 mins)

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Brief Profile of the Contributors to the Session (in alphabetic order) with their language of choice

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​Baskar Manimegalai (Tamil): Baskar Manimegalai is Director of the Nammalvar Multiversity. He is a intellectual and educator in Tamil Nadu, known for making his insights accessible to a broad audience, including teachers, academics, students, and parents.

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Chitra Sahasrabuddhey (English): Chitra Sahasrabudhey turned to lifelong social activism after receiving her Ph.D. in Chemistry. She has worked primarily to organize women and artisans with focus on lokavidya as their source of strength. She is the National Convener of Lokavidya Jan Andolan and Coordinator of Vidya Ashram, and lives at Vidya Ashram in Varanasi.

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Girish Sahasrabudhe (English): He is a member of the Executive Committee of Vidya Ashram, Sarnath, Varanasi and an activist of Lokavidya Jan Andolan. He was active in the Farmers’ Movement led by the Shetkari Sanghatana in Maharashtra in 1980’s and later. He has been a student of the Shetkari Andolan all along. During student days he was an active member of the group of activists around the Hindi language periodical Mazdoor Kisan Niti.

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Kapil Shah (English): Kapil Shah is a scientist and pioneers of the Organic farming movement from Gujarat and one of the convenors of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, a multi-stakeholder network working towards promotion sustainable agriculture across India.

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Rajni Bakshi (English): Rajni Bakshi is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and author. She writes about social and political movements in contemporary India. Rajni is the founder and curator of Ahimsa Conversations, an online platform for exploring the possibilities of nonviolence. She was formerly the Gandhi Peace Fellow at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.

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Saraswathi (Kannada): Dalit women and workers rights activist, researcher, creative writer (poetry, short stories, plays as well as articles) theater artist. got my Ph.D. degree in 2019 for "community under siege: socio-cultural study of safai karmacharies in Karnataka from feminist perspective". My poems, short stories and one act play has been part of the syllabus in schools, colleges.

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Shristee Bajpayee (English): Shrishtee is is a member of Kalpavriksh, an environmental action group in India. She helps in coordinating the Vikalp Sangam (Alternatives Confluence). She is a researcher, writer, and activist working at the intersections of environmental justice, social justice, more-than-human governance, worldviews, and systemic transformations.

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Tashi Choedup (Hindi): Tashi (They/She) is a trans feminine person working in human rights, and social justice movement spaces for 15 plus years and a Buddhist monastic in Tibetan tradition for over 7 years. Tashi is a founding member of Telangana Hijra Intersex Transgender Samiti, and Queer Swabhimana Yatra. Their were also a member of the Telangana State Government's Welfare Board for Transgender Persons.

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Usha Soolapani (English): Usha Soolapani is the Director of the Thanal AgroEcological Producer Company. She Researches, documents and writing about issues related to agroecology, climate change, biodiversity, wilderness, politics of food and health, community wisdom and exploring peaceful co-existence.

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