Exploring alternatives – Building grassroots democracy in India

It has been thirty years since India began liberalizing its economy due to a balance of payment crisis in 1991. While there is too much hype in the media about the advancement made by the country in this period, the reality is alarmingly different. The Indian cities are severely polluted, the ecology is under phenomenal stress, and climate change is steadily altering the established weather patterns, uprooting and devastating communities in its wake. Realizing that the people’s democratic right to viable living conditions is under a severe threat, resistance is crystalizing all over the country to challenge this dysfunctional model of development. At the same time people have also begun exploring alternative ways of being and living, which can challenge the orthodoxy of neoliberalism.