December 2023
Seasons Greetings.
Keeping with our custom of sending a year end report on all the happenings of year, I am enclosing the year end report for 2023. It has been an enriching and insightful year overall and we completed 25 yrs of Samanvaya on Aug 15th.
Our biggest initiative this year has been the Green Economy India portal (www.greeneconomyindia.in), through which we hope to reach out to constituency of people hitherto not reached. The trial results have been encouraging and we seem to be able to expand the horizon of engagement.
Initiatives have…
TAMIL THINAI AS INDIGENOUS BIOREGIONAL FRAMEWORK
“Bioregion has no Scientific validity!” used to be a regular line of argument by the late Scientist Eric Ramanujam. Eric like most scientists refused to acknowledge or accept any ‘’non-scientific’’ definition of land or region. More than Eric it was a question regarding the relationship between a Bioregion and Watersheds by a visiting Australian hydrologist that made me think of bioregion as a framework that can be shaped by the Thinai concept of the Tamil land mass definition.
Thinai is an old Tamil word, as old as the oldest…
I am happy to welcome Aris, my student from the College of Atlantic in Maine, USA as my executive assistant and researcher for the winter of 2023 and until mid 2024. Aris was one of the active students of the class and brought in perspective and enquiry that was rooted in the land from which they hail.
Ram, 4/12/2023
Have been wanting to write this since my return last week after attending the National Symposium at the Jeevika Ashram at the Indrana Village in Jabalpur district, Madhya Pradesh.
Traditionally called the MahaKoshal region, it hosts some amazing diversity in terms of tribal arts, crafts and culture. This place like everywhere else in India is under "development" pangs, with expressways and highway dhabas distanced several centuries between them and the villages on the side of the highways.
Ashish ji house created this beautiful little ashram in this midst that displays tribal art forms, has…