By IPS Correspondents
NEW DELHI, Jan 24 2006 (IPS)

Indian participation in the first two phases of the polycentric World Social Forum (WSF), which wound down in the Malian capital of Bamako on Monday and opened in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 24, is mainly from the WSF Indian Working Committee (IWC).

But hundreds of Indian students and grassroots activists from the women’s, peasants’ and trade union movements are preparing to travel to Karachi, to the Asian WSF in neighbouring Pakistan, which was put off until March because of the devastating earthquake there last October.

“My students are applying for Pakistani visas,” said Kamal Mitra Chenoy, IWC member and professor of international relations at the well- known Jawaharlal Nehru University, who left for Caracas on Sunday.

Chenoy, invited by the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, said he would be presenting a paper entitled “Towards a New Politics and Economy for India” at a seminar on Jan. 25, together with Leo V. Panitch, long- time editor of the Socialist Register journal.

WSF India sent three people to Bamako according to Amit Chakravarti, who coordinates the forum’s office in New Delhi. All were IWC members: documentary film-maker Madhushree Dutta, trade unionist PK Murthy, both from Mumbai, and activist Pradeep Sharma from Delhi.

Two years ago, the IWC organised the giant open-air Mumbai WSF, the first time that the social forum had moved from Porto Alegre in Brazil. Over 100,000 people from around the world gathered in the western Indian city to discuss and protest against globalisation and the war in Iraq.

“Everyone agrees the Mumbai social forum was a pathbreaker,” said Chenoy, an activist-intellectual. “Never before had so many poor people participated, nor was it ever so inexpensive,” he asserted.

According to Chenoy, everyone going to Caracas will be looking closely at the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. “Most people outside Latin America don’t know what precisely he’s doing. For lots of activists, even in India, he’s become very charismatic, very inspiring, very enigmatic,” he said.

Chavez, who visited India in March last year, received a huge reception at the Jawaharlal Nehru University that Chenoy had helped arrange. “The WSF comes as an ideological fillip (for Chavez). He will make sure it will be a big affair,” he said.

Chenoy, who has not missed a single WSF since the third in Porto Alegre, 2003, said there would be “quite a radical group” of intellectuals in Caracas. Samir Amir, director of the Third World Centre in Dakar, Senegal, had invited many intellectuals from around the world to Bamako, but many more would be at Caracas, according to him.

The five-day Bamako WSF, which concluded Jan. 23, was able to focus on “Afrocentric” issues that did not receive as much attention at other forums, coordinator Mamadou Goita told IPS. There were strong inputs from hundreds of African NGOs and civil society.

“Usually there have been less than 100 African NGOs at any of the other WSF… It was too expensive for most Africans to travel to Porto Alegre or Mumbai,” Goita said.

The social forum, which was conceived as an international forum against economic globalisation, has become a giant platform for trade unionists, women’s groups, peasants’ and environmental movements from around the world to canvas support and build alliances.

According to Jill Carr-Harris of India’s Ekta Parishad, a rapidly- expanding movement for landless persons, PV Rajagopal and Sharma of the IWC who were in Bamako, will be trying to network and mobilise support for an international land meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, Mar. 18-20.

The Bangkok meeting is sponsored by Ekta Parishad. Between 50 and 60 groups world-wide are expected. “There are land-related movements in Africa. Bamako was a wonderful opportunity to network with groups, specially from West Africa,” said Carr-Harris in New Delhi.

At the Mumbai WSF, Ekta Parishad organised a parallel event, the Land First Mela (carnival), devoted to the creation of a stronger land rights movement. With presenters from Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil and Cuba talking about their land struggles, land rights was one of the main issues addressed at the fourth social forum.

“But there’s fragmentation of Southern movements. The international movement for land is still small,” noted Carr-Harris.

Activists and intellectuals see in the continental social forums an opportunity to create a more caring and equal world based on democratic values for all people.

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