As green lifestyles gain popularity, researching the class politics of sustainable consumption is crucial. Research suggests that middle-class, educated, and White persons are more likely to engage in sustainable consumption and green lifestyle activism (Alkon, 2012). What impact do these groups' green consumption practices have on other socioeconomic groupings and overall social inequality? Individualising environmental action through green lifestyles can obscure the fact that green consumption is influenced by gender, race, class, and ability perpetuating structural inequalities in a capitalist economy. It can create a misleading impression that everyone has access to environmental practices, and stigmatise people who do not consume responsibly as uninformed or uncaring (Anantharaman, 2018). Through this essay, I seek to argue that elite and ethical identities, especially those pertaining to practices of sustainability and “mindful” consumption are built on social, cultural, and economic capital, both inherited and accumulated. I will substantiate this by using the push for millets and other “organic, natural” produce as sustainable and nutritious in India as an example. The two groups in discussion here will be agricultural producers and second, lower-class urban consumers.
Green consumerism advocates justify their specific consumption styles by distinguishing them from the poor's daily lives. They establish protective divisions that distinguish them from both the impoverished and lower-class. According to Anantharaman (2018), class performances boost the appeal of eco-practices among the emerging middle class, while moral boundary work strengthens the power of eco-lifestyle practitioners in the city by providing them with greater ethical credit and moral authority.
Sustainable consumption practices and policies especially in the agricultural sector in India have broadly been defined by a push for organic agriculture blended with the usage of renewable sources of energy. The National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture 2010 put forth by the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change (PMCCC) lays out guidelines for environmentally sound agricultural practices. While the scope of this essay does not cover agrarian practices directly, it seeks to showcase the directly proportional relationship between agricultural production and consumption patterns and its manifestations in social inequalities, often with a recurring character.
24-Letter Mantra is a popular organic food produce chain in India with outlets all over the country. It is often hailed as the first organic retail chain of the country. In Osswald and Dittrich’s (2009) study of 24-Letter Mantra outlets in the city of Hyderabad, they write that all products in the stores are marketed as “natural” but not all are necessarily organic certified. They write that customers are typically well-educated, from affluent families, and of mixed age. Consumers value certification more than other supermarket managers' assessments. Customers are health-conscious, as evidenced by the variety of natural medications and supplements available, including stevia, wheat grass powder, aloe vera, and soja extract and this is seemingly the reason for opting into consumption of organic produce. The procurement of these products stands in contrast. Sresta Bioproducts, the parent company of the chain, procure the produce at low rates and up-sell them at higher margins.
The Year of Millets, Sustainability and Caste
In 2023, owing to a proposal by the Government of India, the UN as well as the Food and Agriculture Organisation declared 2023 as the Year of Millets. What this move then meant was a push for more cultivation of millets, their inclusion in dietary practices and an emphasis on why it remains an important crop for sustainable agriculture. With increasing focus on such agricultural practices due to issues of drought, unpredictable weather patterns and a need for discussion on the nutritional values of crops produced, millet emerged as one of the first options for very evident reasons.
India was rated 107th out of 121 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022, which was released by the German non-profit Welthungerhilfe (Weltehungerhilfe, 2022). The index measures how well each nation has done in battling hunger. While policy concerns indicate that rankings based on food security ideals are the reason why there was push for millets, the question that arises then is- If the agenda was to solve for food security for the nation, why is it that the effects and access to sustainable products are limited to certain class and caste groups? This can be identified through the availability of sustainable crops through Public Distribution Systems which are oriented towards economically weaker sections.
Similar to the previously mentioned study in Hyderabad, a study on millet consumption and organic food shops in Bangalore found that advertising millets as "health-promoting superfoods" had changed them into emblems of elite consumption, excluding lower-middle-class groups. This erasure of millets' "normal" cultural connotation has exacerbated accessibility concerns, especially when linked to the urbanisation of food consumption norms (Erler et al., 2020).
Millets are promoted as a superfood these days. This is significant because millets were historically thought of as "dark grain for poor people" (Nichols, 2017). The authors of the aforementioned report argue that millets are still considered a staple diet for lower-middle class families living in the villages surrounding Bengaluru. They are grown even on arid terrain and are believed to provide body strength. On the other hand, millets have a very different connotation for clients of organic stores because they are now hailed as helping to control body weight in addition to being good for preventing high blood sugar.
Because of this superfood tag, the middle class urban population also attempts to distinguish their methods of preparation from the indigenous methods, thereby distancing themselves from lower-class consumption patterns (Erler et al., 2020). What I wish to argue in this essay, as evidently put forth by Anantharaman (2015) and Erler et al. is that by examining the relational poverty and class politics of sustainable consumption, a link can be observed between the study of consumption practices to available research on equal or accessible sustainability practices. Performative environmentalism therefore worsens the exclusion of working poor people from environmental politics by promoting class inequality, stigmatising poverty, and monopolising ecological legitimacy for higher status groups. This can be better understood through examining the mutual influence of the colloquies on sustainability and poverty on each other.
For example, there is a dearth of studies on the availability of sustainable variants through the Public Distribution System (PDS). A quick perusal of the PDS archives as well as data for 2023 showcases that primary consumers of materials available through these systems are lower caste groups. It was only in September of 2022, that the Food Ministry of India announced plans to make millet products available in their canteens. This was in preparation for 2023, the International Year of the Millets and the ministry claimed it would now serve healthier snacks such as ragi biscuits, laddoos, and millet chips during meetings. Millets would now be utilised as the primary grain in dosas, idlis, and vadas served in canteens. The availability of Millet variants in PDS shops or ration shops have been limited because in states like Karnataka, millets are often extremely high priced in comparison to grains such as Rice and Wheat (Roy, 2023).
Staple commodities like rice and wheat benefit from current policy regimes including the PDS, the Minimum Support Price (MSP), and power and irrigation subsidies. Even if there are MSP mechanisms for more nutrient-dense and climate-resilient grains like millets and sorghum, they are mainly ineffectual due to the policy bias in favour of the primary two staples (FAO,2023). While the scope of this essay is not directly policy analysis, it is imperative to note changes that have furthered inequalities due to a push for sustainable crops.
In theoretical frameworks, the push for millets seemed to be revolutionary. However, what must be noted here is the historical caste angle associated with the consumption of millets. When it comes to food politics, caste and commensal relationships are at the centre of how consumption practices have evolved over time. As mentioned earlier, millets are indigenous to many regions in India, mostly the South, South-East and South-West regions, and have historically been associated with lower-caste groups and their consumption practices (Nichols, 2017). Miglani (2021) writes that this is due to the “humble” background of the crop due to the fact that initially it was not cultivated in organised agricultural settings like the Rice and Wheat. This made foraging practices easier, and hence increased availability to Dalit groups. He writes of the “othering” of lower caste communities based on the same. The humble crop now, in the present day, transforms into a super-food due to health benefits, as understood popularly (FAO, 2023). A very important postulation here that I wish to put forth, is how this change can be viewed as a co-optation of the lower-caste culture by upper caste/privileged groups, not only disjointing it from its origins, but also furthering the wide inequality gaps in the process. As Erler et al. (2020) argue, in India, destitute farmers may consume millets due to deprivation, but the new middle class views it as a self-optimisation strategy for weight loss and future health. The rising middle class is consuming organic millets to distinguish and place themselves higher up in the food, caste and class hierarchy from the lower middle classes. Millets, as substantiated above have therefore become the foundation of this unique consuming pattern.
Equal Sustainabilities
The unequal access to sustainable practices at large, is one aspect of the condition. I wish to argue that the divide present here is due to the “urbanity” of sustainable practices and that there is a class correlation between the two. In certain respects, performative environmentalism might promote greater ecological sustainability by normalising green actions among high-status organisations. However, it also perpetuates status-based social inequalities by stigmatising the poor (Holifield, 2015). Performative environmentalism may obstruct other forms of radical environmental activism, cross-class collective action, commodify protest, and turn sustainability into a business opportunity rather than a path to more extensive social change by marginalising the very groups most likely to criticise state and corporate capital as well as neoliberal urban development policies because they are the ones most impacted by these policies (Anantharaman, 2022).
The commercialisation of sustainability, evident in the examples pertaining to chain stores that sell “organic” produce at much higher margins than originally purchased at, limits the participation of marginalised groups in sustainable practices. If the reservation and consumption of valuable resources remains limited to certain sections of the society, it does not qualify as an equitable system. The urban ideals of sustainability therefore serve primarily privileged urban communities in fulfilling their ideals of what good environmental citizenship may look like, drawing from Baviskar’s (2004) concept of Bourgeois Environmentalism. These practices may or may not actually contribute to environmental conservation, but they are definitely inclusive of existing inequalities and further the divide. The essential question that then remains is, if sustainability is promoted as an ideal that adds towards a future that has no dearth of resources, whom exactly does this system work for? Therefore, if systemic inequalities are reproduced in reformative ideas such as that of sustainability that should ideally be for all, there is an urgent re-examination required of how this translates into practice, which should be taken into consideration in environmental politics and theory.
References
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