NEW DELHI, Nov 14 (IPS) - What do you call a five-day-long gathering
of 50,000 people, which features more than 350 panels, conferences,
seminars and workshops on a range of social, political and cultural
issues, along with film festivals, musical and dramatic events, and
colourful marches by diverse groups dancing for different causes?

Is it a carnival, jamboree or an extravaganza which does not serve
much of a purpose except for promoting bonhomie among like-minded
people? Or is it an important space for discussion and debate for
civil society movements as they struggle to evolve alternatives to
corporate-led globalisation and build a strong enough thrust to bring
about social and political change in the long-term interests of
underprivileged people?

Going by the experience of many participants of the India Social
Forum (ISF) held in Delhi Nov. 9-13, the answer would seem to be a
mixture of the two.

’’There is simply no doubt that participating in the Forum with its
festive atmosphere and its staggering variety is an ennobling
experience for most activists, despite all its limitations," says
Dunu Roy, director of Hazards Centre, a Delhi-based non-governmental
organisation (NGO) which works on livelihood issues of the poor.

The ISF is part of the Word Social Forum process that began in Porto
Alegre in Brazil in 2001. The WSF was conceived as a direct challenge
and ideological-political counter to the World Economic Forum, a
gathering of the world’s 1,000 biggest corporations, government
leaders and business consultants, held annually in Davos, Switzerland.

The WSF grew organically out of struggles in both the global South
and North against neo-liberal globalisation and its iniquitous and
skewed consequences. It was preceded in 1999 by dramatic protests in
Seattle, Washington, against the World Trade Organisation, and fired
by new Southern mobilisations. These included the Workers’ Party in
Brazil, the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, the anti-Narmada dam
struggle in India, and the Ogoni people’s movement against oil
multinationals in Nigeria.

For its 2004 event, the WSF shifted its venue to Mumbai. India also
hosted an Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad in 2003, which proved a
huge success, drawing three times the original estimated
participation of 10,000. Mumbai attracted 130,000 delegates and
featured some 1,400 conferences and seminars.

The ISF in the Indian capital was organised at three levels: issues
specific to India, themes shared with neighbouring countries, and
international issues.

Among the India-specific conferences and seminars, some issues
figured prominently, including India’s experience of jobless growth
under the so-called “8 percent miracle”; new forms of labour
servitude; dispossession under capitalist accumulation; displacement
of vast numbers from city centres, villages and forests; growing
failure of the justice delivery system with its pro-rich bias;
continuing exploitation of women, the fight against casteism and
defence of the rights of the Dalits (former Untouchables) and
Adivasis (indigenous people).

The international themes that attracted large numbers of activists
were: heightened exploitation of the Global South by multinational
capital backed by international financial institutions; WTO vs. fair
trade; rising Southern debt; the coercive prying open of Southern
economies; increasing loss of democratic control over economic life
in both the North and the South; privatisation of water, electricity
and forests; global warming and the responsibility of states to
reverse it; growing movements for rights and entitlements in
healthcare, education and women’s empowerment in the face of stiff
opposition from corporates and governments.

"If I were to highlight the big new issues that attracted the most
attention and energy, I would make a relatively short list", says
Prafulla Samantara, an Orissa-based activist who works for the Lok
Shakti Abhiyan (people’s power campaign). "On top comes the issue of
land, or its grabbing by powerful and predatory interests, aided by
governments and the courts, to set up Special Economic Zones for
export production and to ’beautify’ city centres and make them
hospitable to global capital. Next come labour issues, especially the
growing unorganised sector and new methods of struggle.“’’And only slightly less important,” adds Samantara, are "questions
like militarisation and nuclearisation of South Asia, the need for
global nuclear disarmament, the fight for justice in trade, food
security, opposition to privatisation, especially in water and power."

One distinctive feature of the ISF was the prominence given to
climate change and carbon trading, in which India has emerged as an
unrivalled Third World leader. Indian companies are trying to make
billions by offering projects under the so-called Clean Development
Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. They can sell carbon credits to
large Northern corporations, which buy them to evade their own
responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“The whole business is totally fraudulent,” said Larry Lohmann,
author of a new volume, "Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on
Climate Change, Privatisation and Power" in the Development Dialogue
journal. Lohmann interacted with a number of grassroots activists at
the ISF and said that the forces that are dispossessing the tribals
of India today are the same ones which uprooted the small farmers in
Europe through “enclosures” 250 years ago.

"Carbon trading evades the central issue of drastically cutting
greenhouse gas emissions to arrest global warming“, holds Lohmann.”It will seriously aggravate the climate crisis while further
enriching corporate interests."

The ISF also further advanced interaction between India’s organised
Left parties and civil society that began in 2003. Many Left leaders
participated in the Forum and shared their experiences and views.
"Their interaction accorded recognition to the importance of relating
to several movements which the Left did not start, but which it
supports," says D. Thankappan of the New Trade Union Initiative,
based in Mumbai.

"These include the campaign for a rural employment guarantee scheme
for 100 days of work for every poor family in one-third of the
country, initiatives to organise informal sector workers, and
mobilisation against the expulsion and dispossession of poor people
from many cities. It is a healthy sign that the Left now relates
positively to such movements and to civil society.“However, many activists are critical of the ISF.”It is too flaky and
unstructured," says Ashok Choudhury of the National Forum of Forest
Workers. "So it doesn’t really lead to adequate action-oriented
dialogue between activists. Sometimes, it doesn’t make even a clear
diagnosis of problems and there is very little attempt to build
solidarity groups."

Many others also say that the Forum is so open a space that anything
can fall through it without leading to real coordination on strategy,
planning, or action. "Most of the issues that the ISF took up already
exist in the space of real activism on the ground,“says Roy.”The
ISF didn’t add anything really new to their analysis."

There are other questions too. Should activists be spending so much
time and energy in organising such events at the expense of
grassroots work? How do genuine people’s movements and Left-wing
groups guard against “NGO-isation”? “There are no clear answers yet,”
says Choudhury. "But at least these issues are being raised within a
generally constructive approach that sees the (limited) worth of the
Social Forum process.