Article

The organic market as a movement: Anantha Sayana on scaling an Ahimsa economy

2026-11-10 · By Pushpanath Krishnamurthy, Climate Justice Campaigner, Fairtrade Activist and Author

Anantha Sayana has spent more than 15 years building an alternative model around organic food, regenerative agriculture, handloom and craft in India. His experience shows how trust, collaboration, small enterprises and supportive public policy can strengthen local economies while creating more sustainable relationships between producers, consumers and the environment.

I am back in Anantha Sayana’s shop.

He has just returned from a long and demanding journey through metros and towns across India, promoting organic and regenerative farming, handloom and handcraft. Yet here he is again, seated on the floor with his laptop on his knees, working furiously.

I first met Brother Anantha, known to many as “Anathoo”, in Madurai. His speech at the Ahimsa Santhai in 2022 stayed with me. I later met him again at a fair in Chennai, where he was showcasing Tula, his hand-dyed and handmade clothing label.

What struck me then, and continues to strike me now, is that he is not simply a producer or entrepreneur. He is a facilitator: someone constantly trying to create space for other artisans, farmers, makers and small enterprises to participate.

Over more than 15 years, Anantha has helped build an ecosystem around food, farming and handmade production that offers a different idea of what growth can look like.

Building trust from seed to mouth

At the Organic Market headquarters in Indiranagar, Anantha walked me through the journey.

The network has grown to more than 15 stores offering food intended to be safe, fairly priced and ecologically responsible, connecting production with consumption from “seed to mouth”.

Trust is central to the model.

Customers and volunteers do not simply rely on certification. Relationships with producers, knowledge of how food is grown and confidence in the people involved form an important part of how the market works.

This is particularly significant in a food system where consumers can often feel disconnected from how their food is produced, while farmers themselves struggle to receive fair returns.

The Organic Market model attempts to shorten that distance.

It also seeks to restore value to crops and farming practices that have often been overlooked. Anantha recalls how attitudes towards millets have shifted, including among public officials who had once regarded them as little more than “bird feed”.

Today, millets are increasingly recognised for their role in nutrition, climate resilience and farming systems suited to difficult growing conditions.

For Anantha, however, this is not innovation in the conventional sense.

“We’ve only revived what was always there,” he says with a smile.

That philosophy runs through much of his work: recovering knowledge, production methods and relationships that existed before industrialised systems pushed them to the margins.

Rethinking what it means to scale

Anantha’s model also challenges conventional assumptions about growth.

Scale, in his view, does not necessarily mean creating ever-larger businesses or centralised mega-stores.

Instead, he favours smaller, well-managed shops capable of being run by different generations and embedded within their communities.

The emphasis is on replication, relationships and cooperation rather than simply increasing the size of a single organisation.

This is also reflected in Tula, his handmade clothing initiative. Using natural dyes and handmade production, Tula is seeking to create space for another model of clothing in a market dominated by fast fashion.

The ambition is not only to grow Tula itself.

Asked what has been consolidated in recent years, Anantha points to making sure that Tula can maintain its own momentum and embrace opportunities despite economic shocks, turbulence and uncertainty.

The next challenge is bigger: encouraging a collaborative movement that extends beyond one brand.

That includes supporting the growth of an Indian Handmade Collective, bringing together producers, members, government institutions and other supporters.

For businesses interested in inclusive and sustainable development, this distinction is important.

Scaling impact does not always require scaling one company. Sometimes it means strengthening an ecosystem in which many smaller organisations and producers are able to thrive.

Why government matters

Anantha is also clear that entrepreneurship alone is not enough.

Businesses operate within systems shaped by government policy, procurement, infrastructure and regulation. No business, he argues, grows entirely independently of the conditions created around it.

His own experience has demonstrated the importance of support from state governments and progressive administrators.

The handmade movement has grown through the efforts of producers, enterprises and consumers, but government support has also helped create greater confidence and certainty.

For Anantha, public procurement represents one of the most powerful opportunities.

He argues that if state governments were to require even 20% of public purchasing to come from organic and safe food, linen and clothing, the impact could be transformative.

Such a policy could create more predictable demand for farmers and producers, giving them greater confidence to invest in organic and regenerative approaches.

It could also help connect public spending with broader objectives around climate, livelihoods and local economic development.

This is particularly relevant to discussions around climate action.

Businesses and producers may be able to develop alternatives to chemical-intensive farming, fast fashion and extractive supply chains, but their ability to expand can depend heavily on whether governments create markets that reward those alternatives.

Public procurement therefore becomes more than an administrative function. It can become a tool for shaping markets.

From individual enterprise to collective movement

The word that repeatedly emerges from Anantha’s work is collectivity.

Since I first encountered his work on safe food and craft, he has continued to build relationships among friends, supporters, small enterprises, individuals and public institutions.

One example is the creation of spaces for women-led enterprises working across craft, organic food and other forms of artisanal production.

These spaces are not simply places to sell products.

They can create opportunities for interaction, direct experience, training and learning for young people and others who want to enter these sectors.

In this sense, the market becomes something broader than a commercial space.

It becomes infrastructure for a movement.

That distinction matters because many of the challenges facing small producers are structural. Farmers and artisans can struggle with market access, visibility, finance and bargaining power. Individual businesses acting alone cannot easily overcome those constraints.

Collective platforms can help create shared visibility, stronger markets and greater confidence.

An alternative to fast food, fast fashion and fragile livelihoods

There is something immediately calming about Anantha’s shop.

The food, fabrics and garments seem to evoke a relationship with the earth that can feel increasingly distant from modern consumption.

But this is not simply nostalgia.

The space represents a different imagination of the future.

It responds directly to contemporary concerns: food that consumers cannot always trust, expanding chemical-intensive agriculture, producers who remain underpaid despite their work, and clothing systems built around speed and disposability.

Products are carefully explained. The women working in the shop communicate with customers and help people understand what they are buying.

The physical space may be constrained, but the atmosphere feels generous.

“Homely,” one customer tells me.

Others describe it as secure and safe.

Those reactions say something important about the role trust plays in markets.

When customers understand where products come from, who made them and why certain production choices have been made, buying becomes a relationship rather than simply a transaction.

From COP promises to action

Asked what message he would send to leaders confronting climate change, Anantha is impatient with another round of promises.

For him, the priority is action.

He sees a pattern of a few steps forward followed by much larger retreats, while governments and businesses continue to discuss transitions that producers and communities are already trying to make in practice.

Business has an important role, but it cannot act alone.

Government must create the policy environment, demand and confidence that allow different forms of enterprise to grow.

That means moving beyond statements of ambition towards concrete decisions about procurement, agriculture, production and markets.

The experience of the Organic Market, Tula and the wider handmade collective shows what can happen when consumers, producers, small businesses and supportive public institutions begin moving in the same direction.

It also offers a broader lesson.

The transition towards more regenerative and inclusive economies will not necessarily be led only by large companies or technological breakthroughs.

It may also emerge through networks of farmers, craftspeople, small enterprises, consumers and public institutions reviving knowledge and practices that have long existed, but creating new structures around them.

In Anantha Sayana’s work, innovation, trust and collectivity come together.

It is what I think of as an Ahimsa economy: an economy concerned not only with what is produced and sold, but with the well-being of the people, communities and environments involved.

The question is how to create the conditions that allow models like these to move from the margins into the mainstream.