The Politics of Knowledge in Development: An Analytical Frame

Historical Context

All knowledges for production systems exist in a context of economy, society and polity. As that context of the past becomes clear, the manner in which they can be deployed for the contemporary is revealed. There is increasing evidence from the pre-colonial about the markets, trade and consumption patterns, which existed for different kinds of production systems in pre-colonial times. These are important to know for two reasons: first, to understand what the material basis of knowledge systems was and how it operated; second, which of these were distorted in representation during the colonial period. These systems included structures of power that maintained balance between human beings and nature, between different kinds of communities and between people within a community. The work of historians, of the environment (Agarwal, 2005; Bhattacharya, 2019; Chakravarty-Kaul, 1996; Rangarajan, 2015; Sivaramakrishnan, 2015) and of commerce (Riello & Roy, 2009, to name very few) has contributed significantly to understanding this aspect of pre-colonial society. This is also the literature that will enable a critical examination of these knowledge systems. Deeply casteist and patriarchal as most of these communities were, it would be important to know the structures of power, the hierarchies of knowledge between people in them. In fact, the focus on the deep ecological balance in these systems which makes them most attractive in building alternatives to modern knowledges needs to be studied in the context of in-built structures of inequality.

The colonial period was a time when most AEKS were systematically marginalized—whether it was water management, or handlooms or agricultural practices, three realms in which the interest and impact of the colonial state was the maximum. A very important feature of colonial policy with respect to them was an initial phase of great respect and appreciation for the ingenious technologies used for production in India. Over time however, with the consolidation of modern knowledges in Europe and the Industrial Revolution, they acquired primacy in the imagination of the colonial state and influence its policies. Thereafter, already existing knowledges and practice had to struggle to retain legitimacy and did so, through interesting trajectories. The narratives of these trajectories have often been named ‘encounters’, a term that some historians have contested (Mukarji, 2016). Some, like Ayurveda, was able to mount some kind recovery, recasting themselves in the frame of ‘pharmaceuticalization’ (Banerjee, 2009) or simply ‘modernization’. Knowledge systems around water management and handlooms teetered on the edge of survival because they were much more at the mercy of direct competition of the colonial capitalist economy. Despite that, there were intense contestations amongst the colonial officers on the value and relevance of these in the local context particularly, despite the modernist, technicist and capitalist forms of knowledge emerging as hegemonic.

This is the background that is important to understand the complexity of interaction that produces the situated version of modernity in India in the post-colonial period—the nature of the state, institutions of knowledge that established the hegemony; the new structures of political economy and forms of collective action that helped continuously constitute knowledges for production and development.

Public Policy

The commitment of the post-colonial state to the vision of modernization and development meant that its public policy broadly indicated a continuity rather than departures, in its transition from the colonial. This was evident in the anxiety of the need to ‘catch up’, as stated in the report of the National Planning Committee in 1937 itself. At the same time, the Gandhian perspective on what was worthwhile for post-colonial India was a strong counter to it and a formidable number of activists both within the Congress Party and without were determined to think small-scale, rural and handmade. While both perspectives were broad visions of society in their entirety, their political representation pitted them against each other into a forced co-existence in government. Together with the overarching steel-frame of the modern bureaucratic state, the industrial vision gained hegemony rather than the Gandhian one. So the implication of ‘making a place’ for Gandhian institutions like those making khadi or other village industries, meant casting them in the frame of mass production without allowing a concomitant space for building a market of their own. So convinced was the state of the non-viability of small-scale, rural and handmade production, that it preferred to keep it trapped in the web of subsidies and special outlets, somehow expecting ‘khadi and village industries’ to ‘fit in’ to the frame of the modernized economy. These had important implications for their epistemology, character of the products and positioning in the market. While some of these were desirable, what was not were the terms on which these changes were expected and the silences on their negotiations.

I wish to argue therefore, that the contribution of public policy to the construction of knowledge in society can be understood not simply by the more common ‘policy evaluation’ but by an analysis of its very discourse. This would involve an analysis of the texts of policy pronouncements in policy documents of the post-colonial period—on every conceivable sector in which the state intervened, which were a great many; and very importantly, the challenges within the system and the naysayers. The subtexts and the silences of the texts reveal those that disagreed and also provided alternatives. As the paper on seeds (in this issue of SIP) shows, Richharia’s work on seeds was clearly indicating a different path to that of agricultural experimentation and extension; Kapil Bhattacharya’s work on the Damodar Valley project was in disagreement with the flood mitigation perspectives of the government; and many others that cannot be completely counted here. Every sector that is studied reveals these voices that seek to bring completely different perspectives, many derived from or directly AEKS themselves. Almost all of them are treated with either marginalization or cooptation, the latter invariably called integration. The latter is insidious, because it alters the terms in which these knowledges are incorporated into policy, drawing on the material manifestations of the AEKS, while ignoring their wider worldview. This is most in evidence in medicine and textiles, but also in others, revealed by work on policy details. These contestations within those working in the policymaking realm indicate that final policy choices are made in congruence with the overall perspective of political economy and legitimate knowledge that are opted for by the state at any point in time and the consistent question that should be posed to it is: who does it actually benefit?

Interestingly, the greatest supporters of the AEKS too, contributed an interesting line of thought on how they could be developed through public policy. As late as 2005, Sethi (2005) argued that it was time to posit the concept and structure of ‘cultural industries’, (which) covers a large ground of activities all of which share similar concerns and command a holistic blueprint that could create a new brand for traditional India with a creative edge. Beginning with the visionary Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, and a large number of those who had the deepest respect for and worked hard at keeping the artisans and communities going etc., there have been a series of policies to cast these skills/knowledges/crafts into the mould of modernization, just to keep them vibrant and relevant—a discussion that remains to be spelt out. What is pertinent of that effort for the argument being made here, however, is that for the longest time, anything produced by handmade, rural and at a small-scale, would be an embodiment of skill, knowledge, culturally rich, but not functional. To my mind, a very crucial shift is required in this part of the discourse—to identify these not as either ‘art’ or ‘craft’ but as knowledges of production—for all aspects of social life; so, these communities were the repositories and carriers of knowledge traditions that produced sustainably, in a foundational and long-term manner.

This shift would enable visualizing a large number of knowledges that are valuable because they balance economy and ecology, but because they are also repositories of deeply held caste, class and gender prejudice, contestable. Despite their contestable aspects, however, it was important to own them because the local resources and systems of production provided the opportunity for alternatives, which made deep ecological and economic sense. But they could not operate in a vacuum—social, economic and political. The complex webs of economic interactions that seamlessly weave into the ecological needed to be understood in terms of the broad parameters of sustainability (instance in the work of Mamidipudi, 2019)—how these intertwined with larger systems of exchange, outside of the immediate ecosystem. I would argue that this shift would imply a shift of our understanding of the entity as one from ‘culture’ to that of ‘knowledge’. This is important because it enables the shift of the political discourse from the defence of a culture which can always be narrowly construed and appropriated, to that of a knowledge that needs to belong to a much larger entity of society and leaves it open for contestation.

Political Economy

This space becomes important because knowledges for production inevitably enter into the process of circulation into consumption and distribution. Understanding how these knowledges operate in actual practice helps us to understand how epistemology manifests itself in technology choice, how innovation and adaptation take place, manifesting both conflict creation and resolution at the level of the making of commodities. What is more, these choices link them to certain kinds of markets, excluding others and these further influence how these commodities are bought and sold. So knowledges are invariably linked to the issues of the production, consumption and distribution of value. AEKS were invariably connected to different structures of political economy which possibly also operated with different values and principles, either appropriated or destroyed. The establishment of capitalism’s superior markets comes from, as the historical context shows, a systematic marginalizing of already existing ones—transforming their form, value and substance—such that completely new ones find dominance and eventually, hegemony.

In terms of the transition to the modern capitalist economy from older forms, the transformation has hitherto been invariably shown to be positive—inasmuch relations of production are based on the freedom of labour and resources to be deployed in production that was most economic and efficient. While there is no question that that was an important transition for the liberty of labour, two other aspects need to be explored and analysed. The first being of course the perspective of human beings having the right and control over nature and the second that the means of mass production can only be achieved by centralized systems, resulting in homogenous outputs, requiring intense investment of capital. In fact, it is now clear that it is in the very success of this production system that its shortcoming lies for the most important problems of the planet—at the stage where there is concentration of capital, natural resources and labour, whether in the older industrialization models or the flexible-specialization ones.

In the political economy question, therefore, we no longer can afford the linear argument of first substantially increasing quantum of production for increasing numbers on the planet—then working on equitable distribution. Techniques and institutions at the level of production need to have designs embedded in equitable distribution systems. For that, we will argue, decentralizing production and keeping all systems used in it as local as possible would have to be part of that design. The work of anthropologists on markets and of Karl Polanyi (1968) and others on archaic and other forms of markets, the local (Mathur & D’Cruz, 2014), will be an important source to understand already existing market forms in the Global South. This is, again, an argument to be spelt out in a larger work.

Critically examining the ‘modernization’ of the systems of production adopted any AEKS, wherever valid, say Ayurveda, has shown that the process enforces certain kinds of products and processes of modernity onto Ayurveda that force it to mimic those of modern medicine. So they land up being its double. In this process, they lose Ayurveda’s uniqueness—its ability to prescribe medicines that balance the relationship between different parts of the body rather than focus on just the parts. While this uniqueness was seen as contrary to that of biomedicine for the longest time, research and practice of medicine has shown that these medical knowledge systems, if seen as complementary, would be far more conducive to overall healthcare systems. So retaining the distinctiveness of the products of different knowledge systems could actually expand the basis and offer the inclusion of values not available to capitalist production, consumption and distribution systems that are now in a critical situation today.

One of the most important questions for the products emerging from the new production structures of already existing knowledges is: who are they meant for? Their ‘revival’ often implies taking the route of all ‘new’ products created under capitalism—that is, to position them for the elite, or upwardly mobile urban consumer. This positioning not only helps to fetch a good price for the products first but also to make it aspirational for the rest of classes. So when their demand begins to grow, it becomes ‘competitive’, lowering the prices and making them accessible to more. This cycle of product positioning is expected to similarly apply to the ‘new’ products being manufactured by AEKS. In reality, however, they are products in the living memory of the society, declared obsolete by modernity. An example of this would be clay utensils for everyday use. Given that steel, plastic and melamine have overtaken the imagination of this product segment, for clay to make a comeback would require possibly the same cycle as for new products in the capitalist market. The difference is a significant one. Now, it would be an expensive, though classy product, attractive, but accessible to just a few which, actually contradicts the basic purpose of revitalizing AEKS. While the part about the natural and recyclable material is retained, neither part of the new economic—of local production and distribution is plausible if the mass produced and machine-dependent model is retained. It becomes worse when it is distributed by the old model of expensive advertising and positioning. This is precisely what has happened to medicines as well.

This is exactly the reason why the older parameters of ecology and efficiency need to be reintroduced into the production process. These can be expected to translate into using local, natural, recyclable material and making them available locally and cheaply. This will also mean a renegotiation of the markets where the finished goods will be supplied and revisiting the model of ‘competitiveness’ that is engendered by capitalist production. If the production decisions are made firmly with an eye on the ‘last person standing’, then it will be possible to make a design to suit this requirement.

Therefore, any politics of knowledge for development argument will be complete only once the political economic structures are included and calculated. What is very useful is that all across the Global South at least, older systems of production and markets remain functioning in some measure or the other. These can be activated, but with a recognition of the new parameters that must be incorporated. All the products of knowledge must be accessible by all and the first priority would be to sell locally—only the surplus be sent out for sale. This way, there can be expected to be a limit on the amount of production, naturally affecting the generation of value from capital invested, but the ecological balance in production and the equitable distribution would be the built-in generators for sustainability, enabling the long life of this system. None of these changes, however, are possible without systematic organization and mobilization of people’s opinion and support for them and this is where politics—or mobilization for collective action comes in. This is what we will turn to next.

Forms of Collective Action

Contrary to belief historically and in the contemporary, substantial knowledge resides at the bottom of the pyramid in most societies. In the everyday of production, consumption and distribution, of living with nature in order to manage it for use and not abuse, in adaptation to space and time—a range of knowledges are constantly in practice, dynamic and evolving. These are the knowledges that sustain societies yet, historically, most societies have created knowledge hierarchies in which the carriers of knowledge are believed to be only at the top, whether it is Brahmins of ancient India or the Knowledge Society in liberalized India. The division between forms of knowledge and the distinction between theory and practice are the basic tools that enable this distinction. Interestingly, the former distinction is most often between those held by the head and those by hand—both the caste structure in traditional societies and the division of labour in industrial society is an exact embodiment of this. For any kind of collective action that would enable mobilization of AEKS then, this hierarchy is a fundamental problem to be surmounted. In this article, an analysis of collective action will explore the initiatives of social action undertaken for ‘development work’ with communities, as well as social movements that challenged modern(ist) development interventions. From the standpoint of the knowledge question they grapple with then, it will seek to explore their political potential, especially in terms of proffering an alternative to the trajectory of development.

Over the last century or so in India, through the anti-colonial movement and after, what Gandhi called ‘constructive work’, has been a principal entry point into doing politics, as a means of translating the principles of liberal democracy in which the purpose of politics was essentially the improvement in the lives of each person in society. Examples abound, from the better-known ashrams set up by Gandhi to Tagore’s Sri Niketan, an experiment in rural reconstruction, during the colonial period to a whole host of them, Timbaktu Collective (Andhra Pradesh), Khamir, Sahjeevan (Gujarat), Gram Mooligai (Tamil Nadu), in the post-colonial. Across this there is great variance in intent and orientation, across a spectrum of narrow focus on ‘development’ goals, to developing skills and self-respect and political capacity among the communities involved.

While there are ideological and other variations, the one thing in common can be seen in many of them is that they explore options other than those of capital-intensive, expensive technical solutions for the ‘development’ initiatives they take up. In fact, the common quest has been to identify local knowledges and skills, protect, promote and privilege them in their work. In this, their work can be seen as that of ‘revitalization’, taking up knowledges fading away, putting them back on their feet through a variety of ways—locating tools and techniques used, supporting the practitioners to remember and rework the knowledges they had, encouraging the young to take these up, including from those communities that were not engaged in them before. Many of these organizations, after some initial success with their immediate contexts, have gone beyond them to link with similar others, to create networks of support and solidarity. Those like the network of agroecology and women farmers is one such, or handloom and handcraft networks.

They offer a critical perspective on the structures of knowing and practice within these knowledge systems—particularly the deep social inequalities that most of them embody. Some of the initiatives from the ground that work towards revitalizing of these knowledges invariably face these in-built structures of inequalities—on the basis of caste, gender, class, even categories of expertise (as between local healers and vaidyas). This is where the politics of those that are involved, is challenged. So I would argue that while this may look like ‘social action’, it is time to take the political potential of these initiatives more seriously. Bringing to bear modern ideas of liberty and equality on already existing knowledge practices requires being what Nandy calls a ‘critical traditionalist’ (1983, p. 62) and Ananthamurthy a ‘critical insider’ (2006, p. 3), possibly the most difficult, but also the most worthwhile of the challenges to be overcome. This can be dealt neither by dismissal nor appropriation, both characteristics of modernity as discussed above. What it required is a different kind of politics, for which the ability to negotiate between the beauty of their epistemology (that offers the much-needed balanced perspective between ecology and economy) and their need to incorporate equality into that matrix. The fact that values of liberation and social transformation from across the political spectrum—Gandhian to Marxist—have been deeply held in our political fabric, would no doubt be a great asset. Also, that they have criss-crossed and have had as much dialogue as disagreement, would be useful in the challenge to stretch their possibilities for this new path. The new path towards this end is a must and that is the only credible contour of alternative politics for India today.

Another very significant form of collective action that has had a presence since the late 1970s has been what the academic literature has called New Social Movements. Two well-known and studied movements, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and the National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF), took a very interesting position on knowledge in the issues they took up for mobilization. Early on, the NBA had challenged, as one of the main points of contention, the very necessity of the network of dams, as also the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam itself. Thus, it challenged the knowledge of hydrology that dominated post-colonial flood policy (as discussed in Jha’s article in this issue). However, a curious set of contestations later, the focus shifted to and remained on the issue of rehabilitation of the displaced after the dam was built. The power of the discourse of big technological interventions is such that it systematically forces its critics to a position that does not question the fundamentals of its premises but becomes about its consequences. The NFF has been one of the most significant voices against the marginalization of the fishing community and its knowledge of boat construction, marine life, seasonal changes in the seas, by industrialized model of fishing by mechanized trawling. The latter has been ignorant and irresponsible towards marine life, while exulting in the increased profits of the new model of fishing, which also feeds into the newer economies of restaurants, tourism and the processed food industry. The early success of this movement, specially led by the remarkable Fr Thomas Kocherry, ran aground precisely when it encountered the power of the market, emboldened by that of the state on issues of the generation of value and its contribution to the overall ‘development’ of the nation.

What I wish to argue here is that the alternative knowledge systems and critiques of modern technologies offered by both kinds of initiatives—whether of the broadly ‘constructive work’/‘social action’ variety and the New Social Movements (NSMs), need to be reworked into the discourse of alternative politics. The reworking will work best when the realm of the political extends to the economic and the social as well, such that for instance, production decisions are bound by ecological parameters articulated by people who are going to be directly impacted by them; or promises of employment are required to be backed up by the track record of companies that have made similar investments earlier. For this, NSMs and development organizations will need to link actively with constitutional bodies like Gram Sabhas and make these shared agendas. Thus, an active articulation of the politics of knowledge will become possible on the ground.

Epistemology

The foundational issue of how the epistemology of AEKS in transition is to be studied is a tricky one. Given that most of these knowledge systems are understood in the modern context with reference to modern scientific knowledge, most analysis is derived from Western philosophy of science. Within the range of debates that sought to understand modern science from a social scientific perspective, social constructivism as well as its critics, and the work of Sheila Jasanoff to my mind, are the most significant in understanding the contestations in the transition of these knowledges in approaching modernity. While this debate is very significant and needs to be spelt out in detail in a larger piece of work, there are other debates and scholarship that constitute the epistemic parameters of these knowledges, emerging from the perspective of and from the Global South itself. One of these emerges from the development paradigm and the repositioning of the importance of AEKS to balance ecology and economy at last. The other is those that talk of the deeper ‘epistemic autonomy’ of the knowledges of the communities and societies of the Global South and the deep harm done by colonialism and Enlightenment rationality to them. For the purposes of this article, the focus will be on these two perspectives of epistemology.

A contemporary thinker from South Africa, Ndlovu-Gatsheni argues, ‘If the “colour line” was indeed the major problem of the 20th century,… then that of the 21st century is the “epistemic line”’ (2018, p. 17). From Africa’s encounter with colonialism, he argues for a ‘drive for a restorative epistemic agenda and process that simultaneously addresses ontological and epistemological issues haunting Africa’. Ndlovu-Gatsheni gives what might be one of the most definitive position to the knowledges of the Global South, by bringing the ideas of a number of contemporary thinkers like Dipesh Chakrabarty (2008), Shiv Visvanathan and de Sousa Santos to articulate the idea of the ‘epistemic line’ (Mukherjee, 2010; Nigam, 2020). Arguing that Chakrabarty’s move to ‘provincialize Europe’ spoke clearly to Visvanathan’s concept of ‘cognitive justice’, he believes that it would be important to move beyond the idea of provincializing Europe to making a clear space for the thought of the Global South.

Offering what could well be position that the world comes around to, de Sousa Santos argues,

In this context, the ecology of knowledges is basically a counter epistemology. This implies renouncing any general epistemology. Throughout the world, there are not only very diverse forms of knowledge of matter, society, life and spirit but also many and very diverse concepts of what counts as knowledge and the criteria that may be used to validate it. In this regard, what is valid for theory is valid for epistemology as well. In the transitional period into which we are entering, in which abyssal versions of totality and the unity of knowledge still prevail, we probably need a residual or negative general epistemological stance to move along: a general epistemology of the impossibility of a general epistemology. (2014: 320)

The Gandhian perspective on knowledge is derived specifically from Gandhi’s critique of modern western civilization and technology. A rich array of this thought has evolved in India, though much of the work has been focused on the documenting of rich knowledge traditions and enabling production from them. Some of the early Gandhians such as Kumarappa though, conceptualized the perspectives on agriculture, spelling out the epistemological differences with industrial agriculture as it had evolved by the 1940s. One of the most powerful interpretations is offered by Nandy, whose argument of the ‘intimate enemy’ created by the internalizing of the colonizer’s perspective on the colonized society, provoking the latter to alter their societies in the image of the colonizer. So long into the post-colonial period, there are reverberations of the colonial—in policy, in economy, in society. So destruction of already existing knowledges is justified and accepted as inevitable in the face of modernity and development.

The peoples’ science movement of the 1970s and the those arguing for the revitalizing of people’s science traditions of the 1980s, so ably discussed by Rajan (2005), articulated the broad disagreements on the issue of science and people in India. The first believed that the task of modern politics, and by that it meant the state, was to bring the perspectives of modern science to the poor in India that were mired in superstition. They offered a justified critique of the many rituals and practices legitimized by religious practice and believed that the focus should be on removing them from society. Yet, it was dismissive of religious beliefs almost wholesale and did not make the effort to link with believing but dissenting voices within the religious traditions, which too had ardent followers, among ordinary people. These voices were those of ‘critical insiders’, who knew both form and substance and so would have been significant allies in this contestation. On the other hand, the epistemology of people’s knowledge systems was explicated and celebrated by a group of scholars and activists, most cogently found in the issues of the Patriotic and People-oriented Science and Technology Bulletin and the work of scholars like Uberoi, Alvares, Sahasrabudhe, Seshadri and many others. The activists took up the difficult task of working with possibilities, once the opportunities were revealed. While the people favouring science movement, now better known as ‘rationalists’, have encountered the ire of, especially the Hindutva forces, the others have remained on the margins of the political that is visible. The reasons for this are many and complex and can be dealt with in greater detail only in a larger work. Suffice it to say here that far more critical engagement between all of these positions is required—where the parameters of epistemology themselves are contested and an active search for new ones is initiated and continued in tandem between the scholar and the activist.

In India, however, it is important to identify and seek to spell out the broad ‘circles of intelligibility’ shared by knowledge systems placed at different levels in the hierarchy. Often, therefore, there is a shared epistemology between knowledges held and practised at very different levels, which is possibly what offers the sense of a unifying cultural fabric. Therefore, the sharp differences between the classical and the folk (as articulated in European thought) in many realms of knowledge, like those in medicine, music, architecture, that are practised at different levels of what might be termed as classical or folk, are not always in evidence. At the same time, those in apparently removed realms of learning and practice—agricultural practices, water management, weaving, pottery— do hold similar views as classical philosophical positions, about the form and substance of their knowledge and its place in the world. At the same time, one of the most important challenges of working with AEKS, especially in a country like India, is to be able to outline the broad common frame of epistemology while sharply identifying the deep fissures that underlie the practice. This has been discussed before and so it is clear that to analyse the issues of epistemology, the links with the spaces of political economy and collective action particularly, need to be analysed too.

A discussion on epistemology would not be complete without a reference to the articulation of Hindu knowledge and its superiority by the Hindu right and its searing critique by both Meera Nanda and the Dalit-Bahujan perspective. Again, here it can only be a reference with the promise of detailed explication later. Nanda’s position has evolved from her earliest critique of the celebration of ‘traditional’ knowledges (2003) to a more considered one of recognizing their possibilities (2016). Shepherd’s (2007) critique points to a very important dimension of the knowledge question—whose work is the most important anyway, and is it ‘knowledge’ that drives the work of those at the bottom of the hierarchy? This critique raises the foundational questions of division of labour in caste society specific to India, combined with that of the hierarchy of knowledge between ‘head’ and ‘hand’, which is much more universal, including so in the principles of modern societies. While these contestations have been articulated in some political mobilization in the Dalit movements, it deserves much more engagement. That will create the much-required space for taking the powerful possibilities of Shepherd’s argument forward.

Conclusion: A Manifesto for the Politics of Knowledge

This article proposes, therefore, a shift in the discussion on ‘traditional knowledge’ in India and other parts of the world—from the abstract and the past, to the material and the contemporary. Given that the former approach has gained so much currency recently because it has been positioned firmly in political action and mobilization, this article proposes that the shift to the material and the contemporary is possible only with a restructured relationship —a continuous and contiguous one—between theory and practice. This entails an understanding of not only a different kind of theory and practice of the AEKS but also a call to a different kind of political action and mobilization. A different kind of theory would involve linking the core epistemology of these knowledge systems with the political economic structures that structured the production systems they formed the basis of. After all, the long-term sustenance of any knowledge is possible when the material context in which it is situated produces and reproduces it. This is the space that enables and allows for the dynamic character of the AEKS—because this is where innovation and adaptation to changing external conditions are required. The circulation and consumption of goods produced have always brought in ideas and influences from outside, which balanced the localized character of these knowledge systems—at once their strength but were also a limitation.

A different kind of practice would visualize actively linking policy with the developments on the ground. A very large number of organized and focused initiatives, undertaken by ordinary people through collective action of one kind or the other, have been functioning throughout the post-colonial period. Yet, policymaking remains mired in the trap of expertise and bureaucratese, both of which rely on knowledge generation in exclusive spaces, away from the ‘lay’ (Berkes et al., 2000). It is clear from the study of many knowledge systems on the ground that breaking out of the lay/expert binary is key to the access and revitalizing of AEKS. It involves ideas for practice moving from the ground up, but also it clearly means moving away from the confidence of homogeneity, to that of heterogeneity—from the perspective of ‘one size fits all’ to actualizing that different sizes are good. So what is required is not only decentralized implementation but also decentralized conceptualization of policy. As always, exigencies of situations on the ground have produced adaptation and innovation—it is the higher levels of decision-making that need to be clued into them for these new perspectives—they do now need to start afresh.

I do believe though that neither of the above shifts is possible unless different kinds of political action and political mobilization are attempted. That democratic institutions have been firmly in place and have also evolved in the post-colonial period in India is an indication that it has been possible to have the system respond to the demands from the ground. In turn, politics on the ground has continuously evolved to giving teeth to the institutions provided by the law. Possibly one of its greatest failures is that it has been scattered, localized and unable to link with the larger forces of political mobilization, as the work on so many new social movements shows. Political parties, on the other hand, meant to be representative of interests evolving and developing on the ground, have progressively narrowed their orientation to an aspiration for political office. This has led to influencing their strategies of mobilization, the easiest of which are calls to uncritical ascriptive allegiance. This combined with the focus on electoral machinations adopting one trend from the advanced industrial nations—significant corporate money influencing elections. Given that the latter was already committed to replicating the institutions and processes of modern industrial economies, unable to visualize or taking the easy way out by mirroring them, the political actors then left little space for themselves. This was bound to take them very far from what was required—that is, contesting and reckoning with forces of modernity in order to negotiate a different deal of a future for a society with a rich set of possibilities from the past.

Twenty-first century interpretation of alternative politics, therefore, can draw upon the politics of knowledge in a very significant way. It can draw upon the potential of constructive action for alternative politics; work to strengthen alternative structures of economic institutions on the basis of knowledge people already have to give more power to them; and it can demonstrate that we can move from a politics of the past to a politics of the future.