September 20, 2022

Unsettling (water) scarcity one raindrop at the time: Learning from the Revitalised Rainfed Agriculture Network in India

By Arianna Tozzi. Rainfed areas of India, where agriculture is reliant on seasonal rainfall, are often associated with drought-prone territories characterised by endemic water scarcity to be fixed by expanding irrigation. Tracing the historical roots beneath these naturalised scarcity framings, Arianna Tozzi discusses how the work of a grassroot network provides a space to reimagine an alternative paradigm for rainfed regions that values their diversity and variability.
November 17, 2020

Not a “wasted” enterprise: political ecologies of wastewater wetlands in Kolkata

By Jenia Mukherjee and Amrita Sen Jenia Mukherjee and Amrita Sen reflect on multiple ways of knowing, experiencing and engaging with wastewater in East Kolkata Wetlands (India). This plurality offers original insights into a provocative question:  is wastewater always toxic, polluting and hazardous? A new post of the series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: from extractivism to commoning”.
May 26, 2020

How new is the Green New Deal for the Global South?

By Vijay Kolinjivadi and Ashish Kothari. The Green New Deal manifestos in the US and UK are among the most progressive proposals coming out of the industrialised world, but they remain flawed from the perspective of the colonised Global South, and fall short of the fundamental systemic shifts we need to save life on earth.
May 5, 2020

A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part II

By Irene Leonardelli, Arianna Tozzi, Enid Still and Sandeep Kumar In part II of our series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India, activist-researchers Seema Kulkarni and Sneha Bhat are interviewed about their work on the frontlines of COVID-19 relief efforts for migrants and women farmers in Maharashtra. 
April 30, 2020

A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part I

By Enid Still, Sandeep Kumar, Irene Leonardelli and Arianna Tozzi  A two part series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India. Reflections and insights from women and small-scale farmers, migrant workers and civil society activists in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra point to a systemic blindness of the state and economic system, which fail to see, understand or respond to the struggles of the most marginalised people in the country.
July 18, 2019

Between drought and monsoon: the embodied hardship of seasonal work in Maharashtra’s sugar cane plantations

by Irene Leonardelli. At the end of a too-long, extremely dry summer, rural women from the drought-prone district of Beed, Maharashtra, finally return home, after six months of seasonal employment in sugar cane plantations. Encountering them allows me to reflect on experiences of drought and monsoon and on the embodied implications of environmental and agrarian transformation.