The image I am submitting is of a machine that embodies multiple meanings and values that I believe are of particular salience in context of the Anthropocene. This is the ‘charkha’, the hand spinning device for converting cotton to yarn that Gandhi made the centre of his struggle for India’s independence as well as of economic and livelihood self-sufficiency.

It is as much a marker of his critique of modern science, technology and industry as it is of an alternative possibility. What we need he had said was ‘production by the masses’ and not ‘mass production’. This is the dilemma at the heart of the Anthropocene, and Gandhi and his ideas as embodied in the charkha become particularly relevant.

The charkha in the image is not an archival object – it is the active, in-use, machine that I spin yarn on for about 30 minutes every day. I learnt spinning just before the corona virus hit the world and the period of the lockdown helped me refine my spinning skills and practice. It is one of a set of six charkhas that is used almost every day now as a bunch of my students and myself meet every evening for a session of spinning.

Provocations:

• machine
• appropriate technology
• self-sufficiency
• scale
• production by masses
• frugality
• meditation
• decentralisation/decentralised industry
• energy/fossil fuel
• hand made/ hand made production chain
• hand made production value
• co-option

Contributor: Pankaj Sekhsaria