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Environment and Ecology
The Field of Learning

Children and young people have extraordinary agency, intelligence, and the capacity to relentlessly question.

Society, Culture and Peace
Gond community to drop ancient cremation ritual to save trees

The Gond community has decided to bury instead of cremating their dead, with an aim to reduce the number of trees cut for funeral pyres.

Knowledge and Media
Traversing Climate Change

The relationship between the herd and the shepherd is one of mutual dependency; the herd is the herders' family.

Food and Water
The Water Managers in Kibber

The irrigation technique is passed on from mother to daughter, from the time little girls start helping in the fields.

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ABOUT VIKALP SANGAM

The name ‘Vikalp Sangam’ is Hindi for “Alternatives’ Confluence”!

As the world hurtles towards greater ecological devastation, inequalities, and social conflicts, the biggest question facing us is: are there alternative ways of meeting human needs and aspirations, without trashing the earth and without leaving half of humanity behind?

Across India (as in the rest of the world), this question is being answered by a multitude of grassroots and policy initiatives: from meeting basic needs in ecologically sensitive ways to decentralised governance and producer-consumer movements, from rethinking urban and rural spaces towards sustainability to struggles for social and economic equity.

Unfortunately, documentation and public awareness of such initiatives in India is poor. There are very few attempts to consolidate and present in cohesive manner, the range of these alternatives.

We offer this website as one response to these gaps. It hopes to feature alternatives in the full range of human endeavour as they take place in India, and through this to help build bridges amongst them, learn from each other, and together present a challenge to the mainstream system. This is part of a larger process in which the co-host organizations are involved, at networking alternatives in India and internationally…. Read More