Degrowth Conference Budapest, 2016 - On degrowth in the South: The Case of India

A thorough and detailed overview of the socioeconomic situation in India and the extent to which the Degrowth discourse can be extended in countries beyond the Global North. The speaker explores the aftermath of the neoliberalization of India: from GDP and billionaires growth to the extreme wealth gap alongside increasing inequality, unemployment, extreme air pollution, fossil fuels consumption, waste, diseases alongside social plagues such as dispossession and displacement. However, it also shows how everything is not happening unquestioned: social and environmental movements are operating themselves to have a voice in the crowd and they represent the alternative to what looks like a set path everywhere in the world, the westernized neoliberal growth fetish. Still the degrowth discourse must be careful and not reduce the issue to that same fetish alone, neglecting imperialism, extreme poverty and denied basic needs.