The Chipko activists have always been close to my parents, since my father was among the few forestry officials who supported them within the bureaucracy. And I was involved with the Chipko movement in my student days.
Everything I need to know I learned in the forest.
In the seed and the soil, we find the answers to every one of the crises we face. The crises of violence and war. The crises of hunger and disease. The crisis of the destruction of democracy.
We are in a strange kind of time, where the kind of liberation movements such as anti-apartheid movements and freedom struggles in India need to be reinvented. We need to retool them so that all the gains that our generation has made can be passed on to future generations.
When it comes to owning the seed for collecting royalties, the GMO companies say, ‘it’s mine.’ But when it comes to contamination, cross-pollination, health problems, the response is we’re not liable.
It is often too late by the time the government reacts.
Globalisation has in effect made the citizen disappear, and it has reduced the state into being a mere instrument of global capital.
We have managed to make the celebration of diversity our mode of resistance.
We share this planet, our home, with millions of species. Justice and sustainability both demand that we do not use more resources than we need.
The abuse of the Earth is the ecological crisis.
Unless the poor of the world agitate for themselves to be heard, there will be no changes in their circumstances.
The fact that I still find so much beauty in a handicraft is because my mother taught us to see not just the craft as a product but the craft as an embodiment of human creativity and human labor.
The system of seeds based on monoculture is wrong and inappropriate. The biodiverse system has produced more food, and biodiversity means that seeds must be in the hands of farmers.
We’re still eating the leftovers of World War II.
The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living.
The only way to build hope is throuhgh the Earth.
The best and most evolved technologies are those that do not destroy the very base on which we live.
In traditional agriculture, the soil is the mother. She’s the mother who gives, to whom you must give back.
Squeezing the lives of people is now being proposed as the saviour of the planet. Through the green economy an attempt is being made to technologise, financialise, privatise and commodify all of the earth’s resources and living processes.
My mother taught that if anyone needs you, you should be available to them.
That amazing power of being able to stand with total courage in the face of total power and not be afraid. That is stri shakti.