Possibilities Emerging with Ashish Kothari: Intersections, Humility and the Flower of Transformation
Ashish Kothari is a founder member of India-based environment action group Kalpavriksh. Ashish has taught at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, served on the boards of Greenpeace International & India and the ICCA Consortium, and currently helps coordinate Vikalp Sangam, Global Tapestry of Alternatives and Radical Ecological Democracy. He has authored and edited more than 30 books, including Churning The Earth, Alternative Futures and Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary.
In this interview Ashish explores the critical importance of intersections, how community initiatives are swimming against the tide and refusing to give in to despondency, and how now more than ever we need humility.
This conversation is part of a series called ‘Possibilities Emerging’ published by Foundations Earth. We engage with active members of communities responding to our inquiry: ‘What if we could respond inclusively and effectively to planetary-scale problems?’ To learn more about Foundations Earth you can visit our website or check out our inquiry.
At what crossroads do you find yourself at this moment in time?
It’s hard to say that I'm at a crossroads. We have choices to make. We can go back to where we were, or we can go in different directions. So that's an everyday thing.
There are times when one takes a bigger step in one direction, compared to another. And that's what happened to me, about a decade or so back, where I decided to work much more systematically on alternatives and in a wide range of subjects, compared to what I was doing for 30 years before that.
That was also, to some extent, looking at alternatives (for instance in sectors like biodiversity, conservation, agriculture, education), but since there was a lot of time spent on critiquing the system, that search was not systematic and comprehensive.
But also, one of the choices to make is: do I continue to expend as much energy on the networking part of what we're doing, which has been very important? Bringing people together, collaborations etc? Or do I shift focus to a much deeper understanding of the transformations themselves and build further?
There’s this thing called the Flower of Transformation (see below), looking at the intersections. I would like to go much deeper and wider into this, looking also at some other parts of the world – Chiapas in Mexico, in particular, and some parts of southern Africa and the Kurdish movement.
I’m trying to see different contexts in different parts of the world and see how this Flower of Transformation is emerging, how I can deepen my understanding of that, and maybe write something fresh based on that.
These are some things I'm currently grappling with.
Flower of Transformation (available here)
What is the next step for you personally? And can you expand a little bit more on that flower model?
What we do is to look at changes that are taking place in five spheres of life. So there are five petals: the political, broadly power relations; the economic property relations of production, consumption, and exchange; the social, which is gender or caste or race or other sorts of relations that people have amongst each other; the cultural, which is looking at the diversity of cultures, languages, foods, etc, and knowledge that is also embedded within culture; and the fifth petal is ecological wisdom or resilience, without which none of these would be sustainable.
So what we're trying to do is to look at any initiative and ask: does it focus a lot more on, say, the political transformations or on the economic or social and, if so, how does that impact the other spheres? What are the intended or unintended consequences of focusing on any one of these aspects?
And so we’re really trying to focus on the intersections, not on the patterns themselves.
The core of this transformation is a set of ethics, principles and values. Because in any of these transformations, what are they moving towards? Are they moving towards more justice, more solidarity, more peace, better relations with the rest of nature, and so on?
And importantly, the ethics, principles and values of transformative initiatives - such as solidarity, diversity, interdependence, respect and dignity, rights of nature including humans - form the centre of the flower.
What I'd like to do is to understand the context and the transformations taking place in, let's say, the Kurdish area, where there's a lot of very interesting movement towards radical democracy, ecofeminism and so on. But this is in the midst of all the war and conflicts and so on, so it's constantly progress and setbacks, progress and setbacks.
I want to try and understand how they're still trying to create or sustain large zones of peace and radical democracy.
Last year, I wrote an article called ‘Flower of transformation blooms in Kurdistan’, which was based on a lot of conversations I've been having with the Kurdish movement and the literature that they produce.
But I haven't been there. So the idea would now be to go there and spend some time, get a feel for what's happening on the ground. I’d also like to understand better the process of a just energy transition in South Africa, the attempt to bring together workers, unions, conservation groups, feminist groups, etc, to work out what just transition could look like.
And then to spend some time in Mexico, for which I'm also trying to learn a bit of Spanish, to spend some time looking at indigenous self-determination movements. Zapatista, of course, is the best known, but there are many others. And see: what does it mean in that cultural context, for people to claim power wherever they are?
Once I've done that, I’d then try and produce some material, which brings in all of this experience in terms of the Flower of Transformation.
What is it about the things that you're seeing that are enlivening or animating you, giving you hope? What is it about those things that is speaking to that idea of commoning or commons?
What's particularly inspiring about these, and many other such examples, is that they're all swimming against the tide, and many are managing to stay afloat. All of them are in contexts of extreme challenges from the nation state and/or from corporations, and even from within society itself, because society has dramatically transformed towards much greater individualism, consumerism, etc. So there are a lot more conflicts internally.
How do these movements manage to stay alive, how do their activists still retain hope and be loving and caring towards each other in the midst of all these crises? There’s a lot more from India that I know on the ground that is really amazing. They haven't given up, they're not saying everything is doomed, unlike some of us urban intellectuals. So, for me, that's crucial.
I think the other thing is that it’s not just these people’s initiatives, but also the agency of the rest of nature itself. It was very badly damaged and destroyed, and we're losing a lot. But there is a certain agency for it to still continue inspiring us, creating inspiring experiences and moments for us.
And it's also fighting back, whether it's with the climate or anything else.
It's really about how people are doing this as collectives, how the rest of nature also responds as a collective. And then how the two are often together.
I learned from these initiatives that whatever I'm doing, whatever I'm writing, whatever I'm thinking, any ideas that I might have are not just mine. They come from the commons, the historical and current commons.
And so for me to claim that ‘this is mine’ is wrong. In all of the work we do, we have no copyright. Everything is copyleft, or Creative Commons. But that's the inspiration from the learnings from these sorts of movements.
That union of being part of a collective, being a steward, and also part of a commons, being one person in one place but interested in many other places and seeing the spirit of that resistance – how is that affecting you?
With the commons, that's something that is already there. So if movements and the rest of nature are not claiming individual property rights, why should I do that? So it's already affected me in terms of what I put out and what I claim to be mine.
People often ask me, ‘How come you're not losing hope? How come you're not despondent about the crisis that we're in?’
I say, ‘I am not the worst affected. People who are facing the brunt of the climate crisis, or the brunt of authoritarian governments, they are much worse off than I am. And yet, in the midst of all of that, they still have the time, or the mental, intellectual, emotional space to crack a joke, to still be making their traditional foods, to still be hospitable, and continue to try and resist and create constructive alternatives for themselves.
‘So if that's how they are, what right do I have to lose hope?’
How can I use my privileges? Not to feel guilty about them, but how can I actually use them to enable, facilitate, create the conditions in which the voices and the agencies of the most marginalised can also come out?
I definitely don't know everything. But whatever I do know, I should be making that available to others who've not been so lucky or privileged as I. That sense of humility, I think, is something very, very important. That has influenced me.
What declaration of possibility can you make that has the power to transform our response to planetary-scale problems?
I would say it's a combination of at least two things. One is visioning and dreaming, but doing that collectively: what are our dreams for a better world? And it can be a better community, better India, better world, whatever, depending on whatever scale and context you want to look at.
But how? What's your utopian vision? How do we do that collectively? How do we negotiate the differences in these utopian visions also, and not come up with one universal vision?
It has to be combined with being rooted in grounded practice so that it doesn't become just theory. It's not some abstract thing floating in the air, but it is firmly rooted in practice on the ground.
If, for instance, we are visioning a world in which 8-9 billion people are being fed through biologically diverse, small-scale farming and forestry and fisheries and so on, that's an ideal utopian vision, but it is grounded in the fact that there are millions of small farmers, foresters, fishers, pastoralists who are already doing that. This is despite the overall system that undermines their agency and knowledge; imagine if we have overall social support for such initiatives, how much further they could go.
The possibilities of planetary transformations come from this combination of rootedness in place and territory and so on, and building global visions emerging from that is what we're also trying to do through the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA).
What courage is required of you to take you in that direction?
One is this foolish attempt to try and to learn a new language when I'm 62 years old! I don't know if it's foolishness or courage or a combination of the two. But I do want to try and do that. I really want to do something meaningful when I go to Chiapas, because so many of the GTA’s constituents are Spanish speaking, Latin American, indigenous people, and so on.
It would also be the courage to move out of my comfort zones.
Living in a city, being part of an organisation that I helped to start and have been part of for 45 years, can I actually move out of that context and do something different? Go and live outside the city on land, or spend more time in other contexts? Challenging myself to learn the language, to be culturally attuned to and sensitive to that new context?
That's the sort of thing I'd like to challenge myself, to see whether I have the courage and capacity to take these on.
I have a hunch that you do. What do you want or need from your communities to make that happen?
One of the things we've been talking about a lot in our organisation and networks is: what is a community of care that we can consciously build? Because if I want to do something like this, I would need to have a community of people around me who say, ‘Okay, just go ahead and do it. We'll take over some of your responsibilities, because you've been doing it for 30 years. So now it's our turn.’
And this is also a discussion with the newer generations that are joining our movements. They are, in their own ways, not following in our footsteps, as in doing it exactly how we were doing it, but taking on responsibilities for, say, managing the organisation, or visioning. And saying, ‘Okay, you know, you've done your bit, you go and spend a month learning Spanish’ (well, that precisely has not been what they’ve said, but in many ways they’ve taken on quite a bit of the commons work!).
So that's building a community of care. I would not want to demand it of anybody, but it's something that hopefully emerges culturally and naturally in our spaces.
The other thing, which I have been lucky with, is the network of resources that could make this available financially. It's not so easy to travel around the world and do these sorts of things.
But it's not just financially, it's also materially and culturally. And I think, through our processes, we've been able to build a goodwill that can possibly enable that.
So how do I meet that without having to sell my soul and go to some big corporations and get the money? What are the ethical ways of actually meeting these needs, and how much can the community actually be part of that?
Thank you. What do you want or need in order to ask to be part of a new system of care?
Needs, I've already mentioned. What I would need to ask is, what are the forms of asking?
It's really about bringing this into conversations as a natural flow.
And that could take years, sometimes, to say, ‘Okay, I now feel the need to do something differently, step back, reflect, learn from other cultures.’ And instead of simply saying, ‘Okay, well, I'm off, can somebody else take forward whatever I'm doing?’, you build that into the conversation, where people then feel the solidarity or the responsibility to say, ‘Yeah, you should do it. And we will help take over.’
We’d need to also be vulnerable, both them and me, that this is going to be a bit of a disruption. And how do we deal with that disruption? Be honest about it, but in a constructive manner.
I think it's more about how this kind of conversation can flow naturally, in addition to what needs to be asked.
Thank you, honestly, for being genuine and authentic. I appreciate that.
This interview was conducted by James Lock with editing support from Sam Walby, Philippa Willitts and Jack Becher.
Learn more about Ashish‘s work at Global Tapestry of Alternatives or connect via LinkedIn.
Find out more about Foundations Earth on our website, or check out our organisational summary and core inquiry.
