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The Andhra Pradesh Zero Budget Natural Farming project was implemented by India's State of Andhra Pradesh in 2016 and renamed AP Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) in 2020. APCNF is recognised as a sucessful example of peasant-led agroecology by social movements, multilateral UN bodies, governments, and researchers. We offer more critical perspectives here, and argue that this agroecology model deepens inequality and dispossession. Despite claims to the contrary, APCNF is locked in an unchanged productivist paradigm controlled by capital in collaboration with the state. By co-opting agroecology, APCNF closes down options for a just transformation of the dominant agri-food regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter is an expression of gratitude, from two students of social movements in India who are currently working in the USA, to the thousands of unknown Indian kisans (peasants). In 2020-21, peasants from across the country protested and participated in a movement widely known as anti-farm law movement--which was, in turn, triggered by the passage of three laws, together known as the farm laws, that aimed to liberalize agricultural commodity production and marketing. But what started out as a movement with a limited purpose soon morphed into a statement against the high-handedness of the Indian state. Through this letter, we pay a tribute to the farmers who drew inspiration from diverse intellectual strands including Gandhiism and Ambedkarite philosophy to craft a profound statement to highlight the precarity experienced by the farmers and in defense of India's democratic ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Global South, non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) face criticism; staff employ strategies to mitigate it. What happens when NGO staff express different levels of awareness about such criticism? How are these differences shaped by whether staff identify themselves as 'community' members the NGO serves or 'non‐community' members whose work serves the community? How do these identities impact NGOs? Through an 18‐month ethnographic study at a large NGO in Bangalore, India, I show that NGO staff members' identification as 'community' or 'non‐community' members shapes their perceptions of the NGO, their work and the NGO's work. I trace these differing perceptions to mission creep. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reimaging environmental communication as not only a "crisis discipline" but also as a "care discipline" opens up new possibilities for research and praxis. It challenges environmental communication scholars to rethink – and the funding bodies and institutions to reimagine – how an issue and discipline as central to humanity as the environment could progress. This article highlights key findings from women farmers-led environmental campaigns in India to challenge assumptions that might move us to overlook them. The article hopes to help us rethink the concept and practice of care through collaboration and ongoing relational research. Overall, this essay hopes to reimage the genesis and the future of the discipline of environmental communication as embodied in the everyday struggles and victories of women farmers at the forefront of environmental protection and social justice movements in the Global South and transnationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divestment is a prominent strategy championed by activists to induce positive social change. For example, the current fossil fuel divestment movement includes over 1,500 institutions that control $40 trillion in assets. A primary pathway through which divestment is theorized to be effective is by influencing public beliefs and policy preferences, thus pressuring policymakers to take action. However, prior research only tests this argument via qualitative case studies. We assess the impact of exposure to information about fossil fuel divestment on public opinion through the use of national survey experiments in three major greenhouse gas emitters: the U.S., India, and South Africa. We find surprisingly little evidence that exposure to information about the fossil fuel divestment movement can increase public support for policies that address climate change. Our findings suggest that divestment movements may be less effective at changing beliefs and policy preferences than previously realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details the politics of scale manifest in Dignity March, a grassroots speak-out movement against sexual violence that occurred at the same time as the #MeToo movement in India but was not part of the mainstream discourse. The spatial concept of scales explains the production of different spaces and their mutually constitutive nature. Building on the concept, scales are used here as an analytical framework to explain the intersectional and spatial nature of sexual oppression and resistance. Based on ethnographic research and in-depth interviews of sexual violence survivors from mainly oppressed-caste communities in rural India, this article demonstrates how speak-out movements help build communities of resistance. These forged communities, imbued with an understanding of intersectional, lived experience from the margins, create spaces of radical openness across multiple scales, be it at the level of the body, community, or regional/national. This article explores the many abolitionist practices of transformative justice__ a mode of justice that addresses the systems that produce impunity and marginalisation__ that become possible in spaces of radical openness. It argues for reimagining transnational solidarities in the fight against sexual violence and rooting it in an understanding of resistance movements in the margins of the geo-political South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • The paper shows how spirituality strategically supports an Adivasi self-empowerment movement in India. • Spirituality provides motivation, makes groups' indigeneity visible, and protects their activities against reprisals. • Tribal groups in India using this strategy can escape debt bondage and gain their own land. • Action organisations working with subaltern groups can orchestrate spirituality to achieve progressive goals. Spirituality strategically enables self-empowerment in a clandestine movement of Adivasis which this paper calls 'the Programme'. To explain how social movements and action organisations can orchestrate spirituality, this paper examines how the Programme helps landless rural people overcome debt bondage and gain land by employing spiritual repertoires. The paper addresses the question how, in the context of an increasingly tribalised politics in India, spiritual orchestration allows some Scheduled Tribes to make substantive economic gains, especially on debt freedom and land rights. The paper draws on an analysis of qualitative data collected through workshops, interviews and visits to villages across several Indian states, which has been anonymised to protect identities and avoid divulging sensitive information. The study finds that spirituality supports self-empowerment in three ways: first, it provides motivation and ideological reinforcement for people engaging in struggles against debt bondage and for land rights; second, it makes tribal identity more visible and helps groups make claims as indigenous owners; third, it offers groups protection from reprisals and creates platforms for engaging powerful actors. These findings are significant because, for activists and scholars who work with subaltern groups in India or other contexts, they demonstrate that the orchestration of spirituality can strengthen action repertoires for self-empowerment and help groups secure or protect economic and social gains. The paper adds insights to research on social movements and organisations on how to strengthen the 'weapons of the weak'; it contributes empirical knowledge about how strategies to overcome debt and exploitation can succeed; and it underscores the importance of protecting freedom of religion and belief in development practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]