India as Venue Provides a Tough Reality Check

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

MUMBAI, India, Jan 22 (IPS) - India’s hosting of the just-finished World Social Forum (WSF) has left an indelible mark on the body politic of this annual meeting, still nascent and without peer on its fourth year but now also facing growing-up pains.

By the end of the Jan. 16-21, 2004 jamboree, it was clear that the grim reality provided by the Indian setting – the glaring gaps between rich and poor seen right at the WSF venue, the huge participation of marginalised groups ranging from the Dalits or untouchable caste to sex workers, brought many WSF veterans face to face with the issues that they say they have been fighting for.

The mix of major issues that shaped the discussions and debates here, in a forum attended by 50,000 to 80,000 people in a country where the poor make up majority of its 1 billion population, show that the WSF is evolving into a new political creature.

This is in marked contrast to the WSF’s identity as a single-issue international protest movement – largely against capitalist-led globalisation – at its birth in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001.

By taking on these issues -- race, caste, religious fundamentalism and patriarchy and gender discrimination -- the WSF also displayed its growing confidence in letting the host region, in this case the sub-continent, take the lead in bringing to the table concerns that trouble it most.

This trend is being welcomed by some of the Brazilian activists who had joined fellow travellers from over 140 countries to participate in the Mumbai WSF. ‘’These problems had to come out. The forum had to deal with the Indian issues like caste,’’ Jeferson Assumcao, a 33-year-old writer from Porto Alegre, told IPS.

For Ana Paula Stock, a 30-year-old university student also from the Brazilian port city, the sub-continental flavour of this year’s forum served as an eye-opener for participants from her corner of the globe.

‘’We are not aware of the true extent of caste discrimination in Latin America, so it was an education for us to see the space opened up for the Dalits,’’ she said during an interview. ‘’I think the Dalits will also feel motivated to pursue their struggle after seeing the support they received from international participants during the forum.’’

During the WSF, men and women belonging to India’s ‘’untouchable’’ Dalit caste made their presence amply felt during the many colourful protest marches, often accompanied by dancing, drumming and chanting, that they mounted at the WSF’s venue to draw attention to their plight.

This was also the case at the march in downtown Mumbai on Wednesday afternoon that brought an end to WSF. The march got underway at a park famous for being the point from which India’s greatest independent crusader, Mahatma Gandhi, declared the need for a non-violent struggle to rid the country of its British colonisers.

According to the organisers, some 30,000 people took part in the seven-kilometre-long march. It was led by the crimson-robed Tibetan monks and included a colourful tapestry of activists, some carrying banners saying ‘Down with Bush! Down with Blair!’ to protest the unilateralism of the U.S. and British governments.

Police, however, put at a little over 10,000 the number of marchers that brought a section of life in this bustling port city to a halt.

The closing march reflected the carnival-like atmosphere that has resonated since Jan. 16 at the WSF venue in Goregaon district, a sprawling area filled with tropical trees and cavernous dilapidated buildings that had once throbbed with industrial activity.

Now that India has left its own mark on WSF, there is talk in some quarters that this caravan of dissent should wind its way to Africa, probably in 2006 – and take on the issues that torment that continent.

At the same time, an undercurrent of discontent coursed through the debates and discussions that were part of the 1,200 events during the WSF’s passage through India, raising difficult issues the forum will have to face as it looks to the fifth WSF in 2004.

The emergence of the Mumbai Resistance 2004, a parallel movement of those who find the WSF too tame in opposing capitalist-led globalisation, highlights questions about where the forum goes now and what the mammoth meetings that have been going on for four years, can achieve.

Activists interviewed by IPS also said the WSF has so far tended to be still distant from the ground realities of poverty and helplessness, which many participants from the North and other countries admitted to having seen and been in close tough with only in India this week.

‘’We are not engaged with the working class. We are unintelligible to each other,’’ asserted George Monbiot, a British writer who has authored such books as ‘The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order’. ‘’The process leading up to our movement is a process that does not come from the bottom. We are unintelligible to each other.’’

Monbiot, who spoke to a packed audience on a session on ‘The Future of the WSF’, argued that only a radical agenda would save this new protest movement from becoming irrelevant. ‘’We have to turn the organisation upside down,’’ he declared. ‘’There has been a capture of this movement by the international intellectuals.’’

‘’WSF has so far been more of a thinkers’ forum, but this time it has dominated by the grassroots, so this has been different,’’ said Maria Hartiningsih, a journalist with the Indonesian newspaper ‘Kompas Daily’ who was also at WSF in Porto Alegre last year. ‘’I hope the gap becomes smaller next year.’’

Another speaker a Monbiot’s session said the WSF’s apex body, the International Council, was ‘’too conservative.’’

‘’If this is all about networking and building solidarity, then it is okay,’’ D Raja, a member of India’s Communist Party, told IPS. ‘’But that is not the case, since they are trying to change the world by declaring that ‘Another World is Possible,’’ but not saying how. There is no agenda for action to back such impressive words. This is cheating.’’

‘’If they choose to ignore this call for action, the WSF will become a corpse,’’ Ji Ungpakorn, a Thai political scientist, told IPS.

But members of the Indian organising committee are not troubled by these fault lines, saying the WSF is an not organisation but draws strength from its being a venue for creating space for diverse and alternative ideas.

‘’If you approach the WSF as an event, that critique holds. But if you see it as one case of coalition building, a place to put alternative ideas on the table and then to consolidate support, then it is not so,’’ Gautam Mody, an Indian organiser, explained during an interview.

‘’Where you take it next is left to the individual,’’ he added. ‘’We are not in politics to offer direction; we are in politics to determine our own destiny.’’