Veganism is spreading in different countries at
different pace. Recently when I visited London, I got an opportunity to talk in
London Vegan Festival about Past, Present and Future of Veganism in India. I
sincerely believe that there is tremendous potential to nurture and grow this
concept in India, however there are several challenges also, some of them are quite
unique to this nation. Here in this post I am sharing my observations and
outlook (in qualitative terms, not quantitative), based on my limited knowledge
and gut feeling.
After being a vegan for 14 years and seeing/reading
lot of stuff, interacting with lot of people from diverse background, both
online and in real world, and also running a vegan business in India for the
last 2 years, I believe what I write here do have some merit after all, even
though there is still lot more to experience and know.
I wish some of these weren't true, but I am just
sharing them frankly. If I prove to be wrong in those, I would only be happier.
Things to cheer about
|
Things to be worried
about
|
Vegan awareness will
increase and the vegan term will become more mainstream, thanks to increasing
number of activists
|
Lobbying and marketing
will also increase, more than ever, to protect and boost the interests of non
vegan enterprises
|
Number of strict and long
term vegans will steadily increase
|
Percentage wise (of
overall population), the rise won’t be significant though
As I see, strict vegans won't increase significantly for a long time, until people get comforts and convenience comparable to western world. It's an irony, because reaching there won't be possible without harming nature and countless animals
(Some people are trying
hard to spread veganism among middle class and lower middle class people
also, lets see what happens, but I see chances are less)
|
Percentage of people who
get curious about and regularly try vegan products and services will increase
tremendously, even though most of such consumers might not have any plans to
go vegan completely or even care about all angles of veganism (especially
animal cruelty)
|
Number of strict lacto or
lacto-ovo vegetarians will drastically decrease, though a good number of
converts might consume fish, chicken or meat only occasionally.
Eating non-vegetarian food won't remain taboo for them due to cultural reasons, and it will become a matter of individual choice. Also, when cultural barrier goes away, many will stop being vegetarians, surrendering to temptation, peer pressure etc. |
Vegan products and
services will steadily rise, no doubt, and their prices will also come down
steadily with increase in volume
|
Plus, rise in vegan
products and services are likely to be backed by organizations/people who
don't really care about vegan lifestyle, but purely see it as new business opportunity
Lot of new vegan products
and services will continue to be aimed at upper middle class and rich people,
because volume increase will not happen soon
Overall (irrespective of
the price and availability of vegan products and services), percentage wise
as well as absolute quantity wise, more and more animals will be raised and
killed for food and more
|
Number of pure vegan
businesses will slowly rise
|
Many of the pure vegan
businesses will fail due to various reasons
Ex: starting with passion
or desperation instead of strong business principles, lack of funds,
inability to assess the market demand due to niche nature, trying to follow
too many principles beyond technical definition of veganism, lack of unity
among vegans etc.
Only handful of them will
sustain, perhaps mostly as side businesses, not as main income sources for
the business owners
|
In case of food industry,
vegan businesses will continue to raise eyebrows and fetch media attention,
appreciation
|
Lacto-ovo-vegetarian
businesses (maybe some of the non-vegetarian ones too) that are vegan friendly
will get best of both worlds and become more successful and popular (even
among vegans)
Some of them will strategically
(if not fully) adopt organic, local, seasonal, healthy, satvik, jain concepts
also, and will gain much more success
|
Hope / Game Changers
|
Challenges
|
Trend can easily change
with policy changes; maybe Prime Minister Modi (who is a pro-vegetarian) can
influence and implement such changes?
|
People behind policies
are heavily influenced by lobbyists
|
Climate Changes could very
well force us away from animal farming
|
Lot of money/time/resources
will be poured into how to sustain it instead of acknowledging its role as
root cause of many issues, and this will further complicate matters
|
Lot of progress can be
achieved with collective efforts from vegans independently
Also Read:
|
- Lack of leadership who
can inspire and instil confidence, and who can spend time in uniting these
efforts
- Objectives and
priorities getting torn between 3 aspects of veganism - animal rights,
environment conservation and better health
- Community spread out
widely, with thin population everywhere, and everyone wanting things to happen
in their locality instead of elsewhere
|
1 comments:
Why is it being expected that the growth of veganism in India will be in a certain manner when culturally, there are so many individual differences within vegans themselves? Worldwide, veganism is unique than the other "movements" because in addition to an "ism" it is a lifestyle also. Indian society is the most diverse -- class, religion, caste, linguistic groups, regions, etc. define lifestyles and vegans are bound to "fit" their veganism as per their lifestyle. I think in this sense, "unity" will always be a myth, especially if vegans do not respect each other's freedom to profess their veganism as they want to. I think the need is to strengthen each change agent the way they aspire and encourage them to weave more and more people in adopting the vegan lifestyle. In that sense, the vegan mentors need to be open-minded.
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