Shiva proposes complementary policies at the state and central government levels to support the household and community approach to food security just outlined.  

Her proposals are recognizably Gandhian in their emphasis on local self-sufficiency, and in supporting production in households. (8) They are similar to those made by other advocates of green and local economies such as Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith, E.F. Schumacher, and others. (9) She differs from non-Indian green economists in more frequently acknowledging her debt to Gandhi, which is to be expected, since in the rest of the world it is possible to think about deliberately encouraging local economies without recalling Gandhi, but not in India. 

Given the similarities among the various calls for locally centered and relatively self-sufficient economies (by the way, none of the green economists is a fanatic who would prohibit all long distance trade), it follows that an objection against one is an objection against all. One of the most obvious and important objections is that Gandhi’s schemes that promoted village level self-sufficiency, although they did a lot of concrete good for many individuals, ultimately failed to transform the system. It is important to analyze why they failed in order to determine whether local self-reliance is a hopeless cause; or whether it could be made to work by correcting Gandhi’s mistakes, or by trying again in more favorable circumstances.  

Gandhi first thought of cotton-spinning in 1908, but it did not become an official program of the Congress until 1921. He conceived it as a way to provide work, and therefore food, for India’s semi-starved millions. Most of them were agricultural smallholders or laborers who had no work for four to six months a year. Spinning was a logical choice for a make-work program because India grew its own cotton; because spinning was easy to learn how to do; because it required very little capital; because it could be done at odd hours in between household chores and farm chores; because it contributed to meeting a basic need, because it could help liberate India from dependence on British cloth and drive out the British by cutting their profits; and because it was a tradition which, although it had vanished, had left traces. For hundreds of years before the British came, villagers had earned a livelihood by combining agriculture with spinning and other crafts. Modernization destroyed the crafts by producing cheaper and often better goods in factories. Without cottage industries to supplement earnings from agriculture, the masses were reduced to semi-starvation and to despair.