Eco-Swaraj ISSUE13

• Ecological collapse / Socio-economies inequities

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• raise of alternative movments
  • re-affirmation of current lifestyle
    • resistance movments against power concentration

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• common features in those initiavives = emergence of general set of values/principles
• forming a broad ideological framework based on the principle of autonomy:

1. self autonomy
2. self governance
3. self determination of indigneous people

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• The term swaraj, simplistically translated as self-rule decision-making in local assemblies:

1. self-rule system (from India with national independance)
2. individual + community + autonomy / freedom
3. social and environmental responsibiliy

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• ‘gram sabha’
• village assembly
• decision-making organ
• consensue principle adopted ⇨ vote system.
• The villagers not allow

1. any government agency or politicians to take decisions on their behalf
2. nor may a village or tribal chief do so on his/her own.

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• Resistance movment by claiming 'people approval'
  • right of consent
  • being helped by Justice institutions

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• Dalit women's oppression/exploitation
  • Remarkable revolution in

1. sustainable farming
2. alternative media
3. collective mobilisation
4. created grain banks for the poor to access
5. linked farmer producers to nearby consumers
6. ...food sovereignty and security

• • • by generating their own media content ⇨ create their own narrative.

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• Eco-Swaraj practice

1. human
2. animals
3. earth rights
4. aiming for social justice
5. equity
   1. consideration at the center of everything

⇩ So:

• Ecological wisdom and resilience
  • humanity as part of nature / and in harmony with it
• Social well-being and justice
  • equity in socio-economic and political entitlements / collective & individual freedoms
• Direct or radical political democracy (every human can be part of decision making/government mainly
  • involved into facilitating connections of peaple/initiatives
• Economic democracy (prosumers's control over their own economy / local business as main
  • strenght without excluding outsiders / minimized private property / not looking for expension but well-being (anti-capitalistic)
• Cultural and knowledge plurality
  • transmission of knowledge/processes to public domain, to everyone

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• RED Societies foundation
  • Sort of structured / systematic version of eco-swaraj

1. equality/equity
2. respectforallLifes
3. diversity/pluralism
4. balancing collective/individual

• RED/ Eco-Swaraj
  • evolving worldview as an alternative to

1. capitalism
2. stateism
3. patriarchy
4. state repression
5. corporate impunity
6. climate crisis
7. inequality
8. racial
9. ethnic conflicts
10. landgrabbing
11. dispossession
12. displacement of communities
13. and other structures of inequity and exploitation for the sake of development.