manifesto for the future - compassion contagion, India
It's almost a year since Coronavirus hit India and put a nation of 1.3 billion under the most severe lockdown. Over the course of a year, we witnessed with disbelief the abandonment of the working class, the worst mass exodus since the partition of 1947 with poor migrants walking for miles, in the scorching heat, back to the safety of their villages. We witnessed our economy collapsing, our public healthcare and education systems failing and our four pillars of democracy crumbling.
The pandemic should have been a wake up call to fix the broken system and to prepare for the impending crisis of climate change; to reimagine a more just, sustainable and compassionate future. Instead it was ‘Business as usual’ for the government. Money was made out of people’s misery, public assets were privatized; labour laws were suspended; anti-farmers laws were passed leaving the farmers at the mercy of corporates; environmental laws were eased to favour anti-planet businesses and industries. With peaking unemployment, mass starvation and increasing inequalities, the fault lines of our country stand exposed.
Yet, in these dark times, it’s the people’s shared struggles and resilience and the power of collectivization that’s showing us new possibilities of rebuilding our broken world. Many conscious collectives and grassroots initiatives emerged during the pandemic that chose to prioritize the well-being of their land and their people. They are disrupting the power structures and the capitalist model of development by reclaiming dignity, democracy and economic control.
The Manifesto for the Future aims to shine light on these alternate, local, sustainable models of development through the medium of folk, tribal art, graphic narratives and a DIY embroidery toolkit. Food sovereignty, holistic healthcare, place-based education, community banks, media and cooperatives and reimagining of both urban and rural spaces are some of the themes that we will focus on to show how it’s truly possible to create a more equitable, just and compassionate future.
The Manifesto
The Toolkit
The Stitching Futures toolkit has been developed to provide opportunities for marginalized groups to reclaim public spaces and reimagine their futures. The aim is to create space for transformative learning and experiences that provide a sense of agency and self-efficacy, both essential in enacting social change and reimaging post-Covid feminist futures.
The toolkit is inspired by Kantha an ancient form of embroidery in which old rags and left-over fabrics are stitched into new beautiful creations. To reimagine equal, just and sustainable feminist futures, we have to start by collectively picking up the broken pieces of ourselves, patch them together, mend them, heal them and make something meaningful out of them.
