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An appropriate vocabulary and language of the commons are essential
for the the health of the surviving commons. At present the
dominant paradigm is so pervasive, that the language of property
is used to describe and regulate the commons. In many cases, there is
no vocabulary to describe and therefore the language of property is
imported and deployed. Even those with legitimate constitutional backing
term restoration of commons as encroachment or, in the case of MST
Brazil, as ‘invasions’. These should instead be seen and named as land
restoration and liberation. It is only then that the legitimacy of restoring
the commons for commoners is affirmed with the empowering knowledge
of legitimacy. This is the required ‘vocabulary of commoning’, needed
for the active process of returning the resources to the commons and
the commons to the community of commoners.
The present crisis offers an opportunity for a radical shift, if we can
move beyond the paralysis of fear and a mindset firmly stuck in an economy of scarcity and stratification—resulting in the hoarding of
everything from food to knowledge, of rats eating grain in government
godowns when over half the population goes hungry and denial is based
on caste, gender, language or religion. They are incongruous in the
present era. These are consequences of fear, privatisation and the
fencing of the commons—whether by executive fiat, parliamentary
expropriation, ‘development’ imperatives or by the very character of
the Indian state which, as an institution of property, only exists to
further property interests. These are no longer necessary in an era
of abundant resources, where a new normal is eminently possible—
of cooperation of collectives engendered by the commons approach
of ‘the earth has enough for everyone’s needs’. The solution lies not
within the present system of privatisation nor in tinkering and inconsequential
‘reforms’, but in a new paradigm, a language of the commons.
An appropriate vocabulary and language of the commons are essential
for the the health of the surviving commons. At present the
dominant paradigm is so pervasive, that the language of property
is used to describe and regulate the commons. In many cases, there is
no vocabulary to describe and therefore the language of property is
imported and deployed. Even those with legitimate constitutional backing
term restoration of commons as encroachment or, in the case of MST
Brazil, as ‘invasions’. These should instead be seen and named as land
restoration and liberation. It is only then that the legitimacy of restoring
the commons for commoners is affirmed with the empowering knowledge
of legitimacy. This is the required ‘vocabulary of commoning’, needed
for the active process of returning the resources to the commons and
the commons to the community of commoners.
The present crisis offers an opportunity for a radical shift, if we can
move beyond the paralysis of fear and a mindset firmly stuck in an economy of scarcity and stratification—resulting in the hoarding of
everything from food to knowledge, of rats eating grain in government
godowns when over half the population goes hungry and denial is based
on caste, gender, language or religion. They are incongruous in the
present era. These are consequences of fear, privatisation and the
fencing of the commons—whether by executive fiat, parliamentary
expropriation, ‘development’ imperatives or by the very character of
the Indian state which, as an institution of property, only exists to
further property interests. These are no longer necessary in an era
of abundant resources, where a new normal is eminently possible—
of cooperation of collectives engendered by the commons approach
of ‘the earth has enough for everyone’s needs’. The solution lies not
within the present system of privatisation nor in tinkering and inconsequential
‘reforms’, but in a new paradigm, a language of the commons.