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Development that was a mainstay in many global forum - whether it be about poverty alleviation, healthcare, climate change adoption and education, no longer amongst the top headlines in the world in 2026. Since the beginning of 2026, almost the entire headlines has been on war and trade, as though these are the global priorities and not climate change and healthcare. Even Indian media's outlook since the beginning of this year has been on the budget for defense forces, our persistent chest thumping on AI leadership, and implications of US trade tariff on India and the overall politics…
Blaming the education system is one of well fed elite India's pastime. Despite major social leader of the past century (Swami Vivekananda, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Mahatma Gandhi, and J. Krishnamurthy, being the prominent ones) trying to reform education in their own way, the challenges of irrelevant and unreliable education quality persist. While the persistent challenge is structural, and each one of the above have tried to change the structure, their followers eventually descend to being content with content modifications. The alternatives to mainstream…
19th Dec 2025: Sustainability & Livelihoods - Academic conferences continued to be disappointing through the year as alternative imaginations and gatherings with genuine questions and non-pretentious resolutions made more realistic sense. The last one I attended was organized with the help of the Fair Trade network in MSSW which continued the streak of academic indifferent conferences. Billed as a national conference, I was invited to talk on sustainable rural livelihoods alongside a young entrepreneur from Andhra Pradesh. The chairperson for the session who had met me for the first…
Recent times we have been asked to provide a Gandhian perspective on several contemporary issues. Gandhians and Gandhian institutions in India largely are absent in the public domain. Gandhi's political, social and economic ideas being referred in public spaces is referred only in an obscure or tangential manner by the dominant left and right.
So, here is an offering. Make this February a reflective one using the prism of Gandhi to reflect on the contemporary issues. Job insecurity, climate anxiety, lifestyle induced diseases,…
The writings form a living archive of resistance, responsibility, and reimagination, stretching from Tamil Nadu’s fields to the Arctic ice sheets. At one end are grounded inquiries into farming and local markets, such as the twin editions of Natural Farming in Tamil Nadu – A Status Report in English and Tamil, which map a landscape where soil, seed, and policy collide. Alongside this sits UnBranding – Local Market Syntax for a Climate Changed World, inviting readers to see the bazaar not just as a place of exchange but as a grammar of culture and climate…
The year unfolded as a tapestry of learning journeys, thoughtful dialogues, and purposeful collaborations across India. It began with the Tribal Entrepreneurship Workshop in Chennai and steadily moved through a series of national and regional engagements exploring sustainability, livelihoods, and indigenous knowledge. From conservation-linked livelihoods to green economy transitions, each workshop deepened the discourse on local wisdom and systemic change.Through the Swaraj Dialogues in November and December, Samanvaya facilitated reflective conversations that wove together practice and…