Politics

People-centred governance and decision-making, ensuring accountability and transparency

This section features initiatives and approaches towards people-centred governance and decision-making, with direct participation, and based on principles of social and environmental justice. This includes initiatives attempting to realize local non-hierarchical systems of decision-making in urban and rural areas, and linkages of these to each other at bio-cultural levels. This would also include collectives or communities that raise non-party political concerns at the local level and beyond, as well as initiatives that enhance accountability and transparency of political bodies. It will include alternative policy frameworks that are based on or promote the alternative economies featured elsewhere on this site, such as meaningful practices and concepts of well-being, instead of the mainstream development model which focuses on economic growth.

How the grassroots action gets the goods

Numerous local communities across the country have not just collectively “self-determined” their own solutions to local issues but also implemented them in a participatory manner.

The Kutchi Weave: A district’s inter-woven response to complex crises 

One can take inspiration from the interwoven model of responses across an entire district and that too done with so much love and compassion and an unending spirit of seva (service).

Vikalp Sangam on Social Well-being and Justice

What do terms like well-being and justice mean to me personally as an individual in the arena of personal relationships and as a social being in the arena of my socio-political engagements and interventions?

മൗലികമായ പരിവർത്തനങ്ങളിലേക്ക് (In Malayalam)

സുസ്ഥിരതക്കും നീതിക്കും തുല്യതക്കും വേണ്ടിയുള്ള വികൽപ് സംഗം പ്രക്രിയ ഒരു ദശാബ്ദം പിന്നിടുമ്പോൾ.

‘Jagori’ – Awaken Woman

Jagori’s fundamental approach relies on instilling community leadership with every training held in the hope and expectation that the attendees disperse the knowledge across the local area.

On the Cusp: Reframing Democracy and Well-Being in Korchi, India

People's movement towards self-rule and direct democracy in Korchi demonstrates how strengthening direct decision-making and building inclusive, transparent, financially strong and fair structures influences all spheres of social organisation, boosting economic, political, ecological, cultural and social wellbeing.

Put communities in charge of conserving sacred groves

For sacred groves and other ecosystems to thrive, a paradigm shift is needed: one that empowers local communities to manage forest and non-forest ecosystems based on their local environmental context through decentralised governance.

Remembering Mohan Hirabai Hiralal

"Over decades of silent, patient and spirited work, Mohanji worked across the country on the lived experience of non-violence."

Declaration on Traditional Governance Systems of India (In English and Hindi)

"We commit to sustaining or reviving our community knowledge systems, while exploring and absorbing elements from other knowledge systems that will benefit us, and exploring educational systems that build on our knowledge, culture and language."