Workshop on Simple Living
| Event Start Date: 8th July 2016 | Event End Date: 10th July 2016 | Event Venue: Gandhi Bhavan, Bangalore |
Graama Seva Sangha
Youth Campaign for Simple Living
Simple living has emerged as the core sociopolitical issue for building a better tomorrow, today. But political parties, of all hues, are unable to take up this issue. It will have to be taken up by the youth, for it is they who are going to inherit this, hopelessly unsustainable and hopelessly unequal, society.
Simple living encompasses in its fold, solutions for all the major crisis affecting us. It is the way, the only way, to contain an ecological disaster that is imminent: global warming, collapse of the market economy, violence, war, the ethical moral and psychological crisis and the terrible impoverishment of the working people; the peasants, the industrial workers, the tribal and the various marginalised communities across the globe.
Simple living by the haves, is the only way to convince the have nots that they mean business, and that the have nots should also join in the process of social reconstruction. All through the last century a lie was perpetrated that the machine, combined with the market economy, can tackle the twin problem of, feudalism of the past and economy of the future. It was perceived that the market economy can bring about equality by making everybody have. That lie has finally busted. There is a deep economic slide down happening all round. The market driven economy is unlikely
to recover.
Scientists are saying that vital natural resources are coming to an end, as early as, in the next three four decades. Oil, coal, minerals, forests, potable water, clean air, clean atmosphere…. the list of endangered natural resources is endless. The disparity between the rich and the poor has increased several times in the last couple of decades alone. Less than five percent of the humans, it seems, control, hoard, plunder and wastefully consume the resources, monetary as well as natural, belonging to the entire living world. The other ninety five percent humans, are slowly realizing that they cannot survive, unless they make a common cause with, the living poor, the living beings and the plant species. They realize that over consumption is not happiness. Sharing is the only way to happiness.
The Campaign
In the first phase we are planning a cultural campaign in order to attract the youth towards this cause. Graama Sevaa Sangha, along with other Sociocultural organizations, shall set up chorus singing groups and theatre groups, to go into the community with plays street plays and songs on themes such as simple living, sustainable living and equality, the centre piece of this campaign shall be a play, “Swaraj all over again” ( “Swarajya, matte matte ”, in Kannada), based on Gandhiji’s seminal work Hind Swaraj.
In this connection, a three day study circle cum workshop has been organized on 8, 9,10th of July 2016, at Gandhi Bhavan Bangalore , as a prelude to the launching of the campaign. Socio cultural workers from the interiors of Karnataka have been invited to attend the workshop. Do come.