PATNA: Noted environmentalist Vandana Shiva on Saturday argued that women everywhere were the main creators of wealth. She also drew attention towards the challenges of hunger and child malnutrition in the country.Speaking at the two-day international seminar on 'Cohesive Development: An Alternative Paradigm' organized by the A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies (ANISS), Shiva said cohesive development could not be achieved without "common interests".Other experts like Leandro Morais, professor of Economics at Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas in Brazil, P M Mathew, director of Institute of Small Enterprises and Development in Kerala, Joseph Tharamangalam, professor emeritus at Mount Saint Vincent University in Canada, environmentalist Samar Bagchi, Indu Agnihotri, director of Centre for Women's Development Studies in New Delhi, Koyel Basu, assistant professor at Jangipur College, West Bengal, political scientist G Haragopal and Mangesh V Nadkarni, former professor at Institute for Social and Economic Change in Bangalore took part in three technical sessions, including two parallel sessions, followed by a panel discussion on the concluding day of the seminar.In the first technical session on 'Economics of Solidarity', Morais discussed the possibility of a new development model and the associated challenges, whereas Mathew highlighted the need for articulation of the "right to enterprise" in developing and emerging economies. While Tharamangalam appreciated Cuba for sustaining its socialist achievements in the environment of threat, Samar Bagchi said Tagore and Gandhi had understood the civilization crisis at the beginning of the century.In a parallel session themed 'Barriers to Cohesiveness: Social Identity Interface', Indu Agnihotri talked about women's rights and inequalities in the context of globalization. She presented a paper on the rise in crime against women and their marginalization after the 1980s. In another technical session on 'Civil Society and Cohesive Development: Critical Reflections', Koyel Basu said the normative agenda of development had to be people-friendly in order to be all-encompassing.In the panel discussion titled 'Towards an Alternative Paradigm', G Haragopal argued that the Indian Constitution provided a vision of alternative paradigm, but people had drifted from it. Nadkarni, on the other hand, said capitalism had aggravated inequality and caused destruction of nature. The seminar concluded with the closing remarks of Barbara Harriss-White, emeritus professor at Oxford University.ANISS director Sunil Ray said the discussions at the seminar highlighted inadequacies of orthodox models of development. "Cohesive development is a family of concepts with overlapping possible alternatives. Peace and harmony instead of profit motive are the basic tenets of the idea of cohesiveness," he added.

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