India: World Social Forum opens as 100,000 assemble in Mumbai
17 January 2004

The fourth World Social Forum has opened in Mumbai, India with more than 100,000 delegates from around the globe gathering to participate in over 300 seminars, workshops, conferences and discussions each day.

The overwhelming majority of the audience have travelled from all parts of the sub continent and represent diverse causes, such as indigenous land rights, dalit (untouchables) organisations, anti-communalists, workers' organisations and children's welfare groups. Perhaps one of the most striking features is the number of different women's groups represented, from those campaigning against domestic violence and rape to organisations of sex workers.

>From further a field, many people have travelled from throughout Asia, with South Koreans and Indonesians prominent at the WSF. Many Europeans have also made the trip as have some South Americans, many of them veterans of the three previous WSF meetings in Porto Alegre.

Noticeable by their under representation, with a few exceptions, are people from the African continent.

The opening speeches were delivered on Friday evening just as the sun began to set on the huge outdoor stage in front of tens of thousands who had gathered earlier to be entertained by musicians and performers from around India and Pakistan.

Many of the speeches had an air of predictability with Brazilian Chico Whittaker, one of the people behind the first forum reiterating the WSF's mantra that "Another World Is Possible". He stated that the forum must facilitate the building of horizontal relationships, respectful of diversity and differences, with this new process the new permanent networks could "build the new world".

Nobel Peace prize winner, Shiri Abadi from Iran called for the reform of the WTO and UN, believing this to be the key to reducing global poverty. Her message to the WSF was that we must work for the "Democratisation of Globalisation"

UK MP and anti-war campaigner Jeremy Corbyn delivered a fiery speech, calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq and describing it as "a country up for sale". Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti appealed for people not to be nuetral and to support the Palestinian struggle just as they supported the struggles of independence of India and Algeria and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.

It was left to Amir Al Rekabi, speaker for the Iraqi National Democratic opposition and writer and campaigner Arundhati Roy to go beyond mere rhetoric and call for action.

Al Rekabi called for a campaign with people going to Iraq to provide practical solidarity with those under occupation just as French farmer Jose Bové had done by visiting occupied Palestine.

Roy said it was no longer enough to just talk of our victory. Pleading, "Don't just support the resistance, be part of the resistance," she called for the closing plenary to commit the WSF to initiating a campaign targeting two prominent US companies which benefit from the occupation of Iraq, with the aim of shutting them down.

Whilst this call was met with one of the biggest cheers of the evening it contradicts the WSF charter that forbids the forum taking decisions and calling for action.

At best, the idea will be taken up by the Assembly of the Social Movements which is meeting daily to produce a call, which it will deliver in its own name on 20 January.

The call itself, falls woefully short of what is required to end the occupation of Iraq. The WSF - which boasts the support of trade union federations around the world could issue the call for a global general strike - just as on 15 February last year 20 million poured onto the streets to protest against the imminent invasion of Iraq after a call by the Assembly of the Social Movements at the 2002 European Social Forum in Florence. A call at this Assembly could transform the political landscape.

What is missing is not the means but the political will. The WSF has
achieved much in uniting and spreading the global movement against
capitalism but increasingly finds itself dominated by the participation of NGOs.

Platform speakers and stalls in Mumbai are overwhelmingly provided by the NGOs and their banners and flags dominate the dusty walkways which criss-cross the sprawling showgrounds, which play host to the forum. Oxfam,Action Aid and Jubilee South are just some of the big name organisations behind the forum.

Many of the delegates have also been sponsored to attend by NGO money, some of which, in turn, is raised from government grants from the very regimes the movement seeks to challenge.

This phenomenon has already caused a split in the movement in India with many of the Stalinist and Maoists groups and their front organisations denouncing the WSF. They have organised the rival Mumbai Resistance 2004 conference which is taking place simultaneously across the road.

Whilst many of their criticisms may be correct, by sidelining themselves they consolidate the grip of the reformists over the mass movement.

It would be premature to suggest that it is already too late to transform the WSF into anything other than the talking shop its leaders would like it to remain.

But perhaps former Indian premier VP Singh was right when, in a message of his read out at the opening plenary, he echoed La Monde Diplomatique editor Bernard Cassen in saying the WSF represents the movement that began in Porto
Alegre three years ago.

Because this movement feels very different from the anti-capitalist movement that grabbed the headlines in violent confrontations with the state on the streets of Seattle in 1999.

The spirit of Seattle is hard to discern here in Mumbai.