ABSTRACT
Historically, early human societies prospered on the theme of cohesive development of free human beings and unbound nature. Most periods of the history of human society show a pattern of cohesive development as a basis of human practice and relations with nature. Even after the emergence of state-dominated societies and the caste system in India, Adivasi culture and social-economic practices maintained a pattern of cohesive development. Farming communities maintained partial glimpses of cohesive development within the oppressive frameworks of caste, class, and gender. A real blow to these glimpses came from the emergence of modern industrial society, in the form of capitalism. Today, people’s struggles for drought eradication, equitable water distribution, organic agriculture, and wind and solar energy use are alternative developmental paradigms based on their ancestral experiences woven into alternatives by scientists and agriculturists. Experiments by Maharashtra’s farmers to determine the water requirement for a minimum agricultural livelihood and the successful struggle against Ambani’s coal-based power plants on the Konkan villages who proposed a full alternative plan are excellent examples. Creating a comprehensive and tested theory can be proved through these practical examples from people’s movements and experiments.
