India Needs a Rainbow Recovery Plan

Context: A Rainbow New Deal (RND) - as an approach to sustainable future should be employed , which would require integration of ecological protection and tackling inequality.

The Rainbow New Deal for Sustainable Future: It goes beyond the environmentalism of the Green New Deal, originated in the West and entails recognition of following features -

• Generate dignified, sustainable livelihoods: for the vast majority of the population and workforce that is today living precarious lives. 

• Regenerating and safeguarding country’s soil, natural ecosystem, water, biological diversity and air, since more we destroy, more crisis like COVID and climate change are invited. 
• Farmers, pastoralists and fishers can be enabled to switch to organic, ecologically sustainable production, with their own food security as the highest priority, and with local marketing links. 

• Encourage natural lifestyles and livelihoods: that obtain substantial food, medicines, house hold items and other needs and also sustainable livelihoods,.

• Forest-based livelihoods alone, for instance, can support 100 million people. 

• Reviving diversity of crafts: through decentralised production of most goods and services, across all villages and towns.

• This could gainfully employ 200 million people. 

• • • • Schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme could be re oriented and extended, including for urban livelihoods

• Decentralisation of basic facilities: Investments in public health, education, housing, transportation and other basic needs should be utilised in a decentralised way with appropriate training of the locals.

• • • • The same decentralisation model can be employed for other services like digital networks and communications or infrastructure development by workers cooperative.

• Encourage local production and address local needs: Soaps, footwear, furniture, clothes, energy, and myriad other items of everyday use can be produced by community run units.

• Saves Money: For E.g. Sarpanch of Kunariya village in Kachchh in Gujarat, proposed that they can save ?40 lakh a month on such items by producing them locally.
• ‘Made in India’ should be ‘Hand made in India’ -  by local workers.
• Concept of ‘network economy’, in which clusters of villages can be self-reliant for most basic needs, and exchange with neighbouring clusters what they can not produce or grow. 

• Government Support: Government sponsored programmes like Kudumbashree in Kerala and Jharcraft in Jharkhand supported communities during COVID19 lockdown.

• Tackling the inequality: which is rooted in casteism, patriarchy and other structures including LGBTQ+ community.

• Need for reforms in land reforms, including recognising collective rights over the commons: forests, grasslands, coastal and marine areas, biodiversity, wet lands, water, and knowledge. 
• Legislation similar to the Forest Rights Act, and community mobilisation to implement it, is needed for all other ecosystems. 

• Wealth Redistribution: A mere 2% wealth tax coupled with a 33% inheritance tax on the richest 1% of India could generate more revenue than the total recovery package the Government of India announced in May 2020.

Conclusion: The recent protest around Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2020, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens provide hope  for push towards a RND kind of transformation.