India is poised to press home its civilisational charisma and unique advantages in the quest to realise its goals under the mission Viksit Bharat 2047. Fuelled by conceptual, imaginative and practical inputs derived from the continuously preserved Indian Knowledge Systems (Bharatiya Jñāna Paramparā), India’s developmental mission is not for its own exclusive benefit; rather, it is to guide the world in its anxious search for an alternative holistic paradigm of growth that preserves the universal core of human life and values, restores our vital spiritual connections with natural environments and rejuvenates an organic sense of community even as global enterprise prospers and enables a sense of economic well-being and security in people.

It is clear that the amoral model of laissez-fairé capitalism that has been expanding across the globe since the end of World War II has now reached a conceptual dead-end. Climate change, recurring global challenges to food security and public health, terrorism, weaponisation of information, burgeoning refugee populations, energy crises, disrupted global supply-chains and high trade tariffs threaten to undermine international cooperation, confuse strategic priorities and upset developmental roadmaps. In the early years of economic liberalisation, Swami Ranganathananda, the towering spiritual leader and pontiff of the Ramakrishna Mission, had warned that without compassion and moral character, a stable pattern development could not be achieved. If practical knowledge is not integrated with spiritual wisdom, humanity will be at the mercy of what the biologist Richard Dawkins has described as the “selfish gene”. India is uniquely poised to address this problematic historical conjuncture as its civilisational DNA is imprinted with organic models of leadership and progress derived from the ancient practical and moral sciences realised by our rishis and gurus.

Can the traditional knowledges reorganised under the rubric of the Indian Knowledge Systems guide us in understanding the complex nature of our developmental challenges and in devising creative solutions that will help us realise our goals? Will the Indian Knowledge Systems prove a game-changer in meeting global aspirations while harmoniously aligning them to the environment that supports and sustains life on the planet? These are the key questions that we wish to pursue through a curation of essays that offer wide-ranging and multidisciplinary engagements with the developmental perspectives that can be gleaned from the Indian Knowledge Systems.

We invite abstracts for papers that address (but not necessarily limiting themselves to) the following areas:

IKS and Climate Change

IKS and Knowledge Societies

IKS and Sustainable Enterprise

IKS and Universal Design for Inclusive Spaces and Processes

IKS and Regional Cooperation for Constructive Geopolitics

IKS and National Security

IKS and Food Security

IKS, Shelters and Sanctuaries

IKS and Youth Aspirations