Editorial:
To live is to share. Whoever or whatever we are, sharing is inevitable – we at least share the air we breathe, the space we live in, the sources of water we use, the culture we are immersed in and much more.
By consciously sharing we are merely acknowledging or owning up our natural selves. By creating spaces to share in, we merely enable those who share our part of the Earth with us to get together, to live naturally, in a world that has often attempted to isolate us from others and from Nature.
This issue of Eternal Bhoomi marks an important milestone for us. We bring to you a new beginning, the start of the Yugaantar journey. This journey is essentially about sharing – leading thinkers and doers sharing their wisdom and struggles, youngsters sharing their enthusiasm, skills and insights, and everyone who wishes to, sharing their passion and support towards a more Earth conscious and humane way of life.
This issue is also about the launching of theYugaantar Resource Hub – a way to share thoughts and stories on ecological living with our youth, and with educators who are closely associated with them.
In Sanskrit, the word “yugaantar” means the tough transition period between two historical ages. It aptly describes present – day life and living. Leading thinkers agree that, with climate change, pollution, deforestation, social injustice, violence and other crises created by the industrial age, the imperatives of an ecological era are, today, increasingly apparent. We live in a “yugaantar.”
The idea of the Resource Hub emerged over several meetings and unfolded as a three day workshop and a conference held in Bangalore this April. The three themes we focused on during these four days included – Philosophy for an Ecological Age, Livelihoods and Economics of Wellbeing and Education and Holistic Thinking.
Editor-in-Chief of the Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine, Satish Kumar, who has been a guiding spirit to so many eco-ventures around the world, was present to inaugurate the sessions. Apart from engaging with all of us and spreading his warm and optimistic vibrations, he spoke on the need to feel ‘one with Nature’. His talk is our opening article for this issue.
Other anchors for the Yugaantar programmes included Ashish Kothari and Aseem Shrivastava, (co-authors of Churning the Earth – The Making of Global India). Extracts from their talks and articles are presented here, in ‘Listening to Tagore’ and ‘Livelihoods and Deadlihoods’. They offer a broad overview of basic philosophical ideas that have governed our modern civilization and some ground realities of life and livelihoods today. Dhrubajyothi Ghosh, R. Sridhar and Sonam Wangchuk were other speakers whose talks/articles are presented in this issue too.
Yugaantar is a space to share for all of us who are concerned about humanity’s relationship with Nature today. We hope that you will join in to share and participate, to co-create resources for ecological living through Yugaantar.
Some of the articles in the issue. (Click on title to view the article)
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