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Porto Alegre - Hyderabad - Porto Alegre
Reflections on the past year of the World Social Forum process in India, and internationally - 2003
By Jai Sen (*) See full discussion paper
Summary
It is now two years since the first World Social Forum was held in January 2001, and a year since we established the World Social Forum in India in January 2002. In my understanding, the formation of the World Social Forum (WSF), globally and then in India, has been a very important step since I believe that WSF is an extremely significant social and political intervention in world affairs. This significance alone demands critical reflection on a first year’s involvement with this process both in India and internationally. The fact that as things stand, the plan is to hold the next global World Social Forum – in January 2004 - outside Brazil and in India, makes reflection even more necessary.
There have also been some very important developments during the last one year, internationally and in both India and Brazil, that have a direct relevance to the Forum in India and to its future. Internationally, even as the Forum has grown and global civil action has continued to mature, the USA - after devastating Afghanistan in its so-called ‘war against terrorism’ - is now relentlessly building up plans to devastate and thereby ‘liberate’ Iraq.
Across the globe, capitalist globalisation is still riding triumphant even as the economy unravels within the United States, and ‘security’ and surveillance measures are equally being relentlessly tightened by nation-states, supposedly in defence against those labelled terrorists, but also against protestors. The self-styled leaders of the so-called ‘free world’ are increasingly meeting in increasingly remote parts of the world, walling themselves off from ordinary people, and defending themselves with their militia. Accompanying this, Europe seems to be moving steadily to the right, and Hindu, Islamic, Christian, and Jewish fundamentalisms are rampant in different parts of the world. The shadows of imperialism and authoritarianism are very evident.
Against this, the news from Brazil has been encouraging. The presidential elections have finally brought Lula (Luis Inácio Lula da Silva), the leader of the Workers’ Party to the Presidency after a long campaign and several attempts. This development would seem to potentially change the political landscape in significant ways in this major country, and therefore in the world.
The news from India, however, has been less encouraging. Here, we have experienced a brutal and chilling anti-Muslim pogrom in the state of Gujarat in March-April 2002. More recently, while the elections in the highly contested state of Kashmir yielded a fresh government, the state elections in Gujarat have returned to power with a landslide the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party that is widely seen as having been responsible for the communal violence, and its neo-fascist Chief Minister. With the party and its allied organisations saying that Gujarat is a model for what should happen in the rest of the country, the shadows of fascism seem to threaten India.
This is only a fragment of what is happening in the world today. But given this broader background against which the Forum is taking shape, I believe that it is at a critical juncture, and needs urgently to take a step back and try and see the larger picture - but where the trees and the woods are of course deeply related. It is not merely useful but I believe also crucially important and necessary for all of us involved with or participating in the Forum - in India and in other countries, and internationally - to take stock about the WSF process within particular countries and to the extent we can, also globally, to see how -- if at all -- we are relating to these larger events, and how we could and should strategically relate to them. And especially given the proposal to hold the World Social Forum 2004 in India.
Perhaps the most important characteristic and contribution of the Forum is the ‘open space’ it offers for free exchange - an undirected space where a wide range of streams of thought and action can intermingle without feeling that any of them has to follow another. But this is a complex and new idea, as is the idea that it is not merely an annual event, but is – or needs to be – more a process. I have therefore also prepared this paper on the assumption that in something as complex and important as the WSF, it is extremely important to constantly critically reflect on it as we go along, and that reflection can only strengthen the organising work that is the real work. The paper argues in much greater detail than is mentioned in this summary, that the two – organising and reflection – need to be done closely together.
To do this, it is important to also keep in mind the achievements of the World Social Forum during this time both globally and in India:
Achievements: The WSF globally, and more generally
In processual terms since 2001 the WSF has moved from being a major annual event each January in Porto Alegre, timed to polemically challenge the annual World Economic Forum held at Davos, Switzerland, to being an efflorescence and celebration across the world. Among other events, in 2002, a ‘regional’ Social Forum was held in Florence, Italy, in November – which was the scene of a march by some 500,000-1 million people in a peace rally in protest against the US-led war that is threatening on Iraq; and in early 2003, before the next Forum in Porto Alegre in late January, four regional Fora will have been held – the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad, India, the Palestine Social Forum, an Africa Social Forum, and a Pan-Amazonian Social Forum, and also several national and city forums in various parts of the world.
The annual event in Porto Alegre is also changing. From the first meeting that was dominantly a challenge to economic globalisation in 2001, it moved to being a meeting that made a call for alternatives – ‘Another World Is Possible!’ in 2002. The third meeting in January 2003 will be more focussed on articulating the alternatives and beginning to spell out ways in which the alternatives can be achieved. These are crucial developments.
In terms of numbers, the relevance of the Forum is shown by growth – from 25-30,000 people at the first Forum, to 50-60,000 at the second, to an expected 100,000 at the third.
But it is not the numbers alone that count. Perhaps most importantly, the WSF has struck at the level of meaning. It has resonantly made clear that there is an alternative to economic, capitalist globalisation, there are alternatives. And that people all over the world are now mobilising to live those alternatives. In this way, the WSF – along with all the other forms of global civil action that are also taking place - is playing a profound role in freeing peoples all over the world of the shackles of the colonisation of the mind.
Achievements: WSF in India
One of the many reasons that the consultation in Delhi in January 2002 decided to take up the task of building a WSF process in India was that the Forum could potentially provide a context where a broad secular, democratic, anti-fundamentalist, and internationalist platform could take shape where, most significantly, civil and political streams could come together. Crucially, it was seen to be a space where old movements and politics could meet and talk with new movements and politics.
The last year has seen a fairly active and broad-based World Social Forum process underway in the country. Following the two national consultations (in January and in April 2002) that involved a fairly wide range of organisations and groups in the country, a broad programme of action was agreed upon at the second consultation, held in Bhopal on April 19-20, 2002.
In January 2002, WSF India had offered to organise a regional Social Forum. But conscious of the limitations that single big meetings have in terms of ‘reaching out’ to and being accessible by the huge numbers of concerned people, in its early meetings WSF India placed great stress on seeing the World Social Forum not only as a major event but also as a mass process of open exchange of information and experience. And thereby as a political culture of openness which millions of people can gain access to and take part in.
In this context, the most visible -- and in many ways most significant -- development has been the successful organisation of the Asian Social Forum in early January 2003, in Hyderabad in central India. In format similar to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, some 14-15,000 people attended and took part in six major conferences, dozens of seminars, and hundreds of workshops on a wide range of social, economic, and political themes.
The Forum was however also criticised and even opposed and boycotted by some movements, for diverting attention from the real tasks of opposing capitalist globalisation – by being something of a carnival - and also for being organised in such a way that it has tended to exclude some popular grassroots movements.
In reality, the WSF India process during this past year was also much less extensive than planned. While several state meetings were held, to present and discuss the idea of the World Social Forum; to exchange experiences, and to develop a general plan of action for activities at more local / state levels and how participants from the states would take part in the Asian Social Forum in January 2003, the broader mass process that was aimed for is still to develop. Some state meetings were also more successful than others; perhaps the most successful was the Kerala Forum, held during December 26-29 2002.
Even as some of us are trying to analyse these developments, WSF India has been working with the possibility that the Global WSF meeting in January 2004 may be held in India – the first time that this meeting will be held outside Brazil. This proposal speaks of the importance of the real and symbolic roles of both societies in world history and politics. But given the context in which we are working today, it seems necessary for both WSF India and the WSF International Council to take serious stock of the grim political situation in the country and the world, and to re-examine the questions of how the World Social Forum should be developed as well as the immediate and more particular decision of whether they feel holding the global meeting in January 2004 in India is what WSF India should focus its attention on over this coming year.
Issues for discussion
The following are some of the main related issues that I have tried to highlight in my paper:
• Individuals and organisations participating in the World Social Forum need to understand the Forum as an extraordinary initiative in history and not just as another series of meetings. It can potentially mark nothing less than a major new intervention in world affairs. But it can only become this if we are willing to become aware of the responsibilities that this brings on us.
• If we agree that the most important characteristic of the Forum is the ‘open space’ it offers for free exchange, then especially at the present juncture in history, the World Social Forum needs to make it its task to promote the idea of open space as a general political culture in civil and political work. Building open space – building an open political culture, and defending open space – needs to be seen as a project in itself, and those who believe in this idea need to come and work together on this.
• But conversely, along with this come responsibilities on organisations participating in the World Social Forum: Are such organisations, and especially those leading it, willing to accept the challenge of open space and to bring this culture into their own organisations?
• Individuals and organisations participating in the World Social Forum need to recognise and celebrate diversity and plurality, not just in name and slogans but also in day-to-day practice, recognising, respecting and even seeking opinions different from our own, and trying to understand and engage with them. We need to get over tendencies of sectarian, doctrinaire, hierarchical, and closed practice – seen, for instance, in WSF India over this past year - which are keeping large sections away from the WSF as a process and experience.
• At this dangerous juncture in history, there has to be a constant struggle to remain tolerant and pluralist and to guard against becoming fundamentalist in our own views about the issues we are so concerned about – such as capitalist globalisation, and religion and religious fundamentalism. And to at all times listen to others who are less sure of their positions or who hold other opinions and be willing to dialogue and to debate issues, both as organisations and as individuals.
• We need to get over our complacence urgently. It is time we realised that the right and the fundamentalists are presently far more strategic and far more successful than we are, and that we are not going to keep them out and away – including from the World Social Forum – simply by declaring this or by not inviting them. All the more so because the Forum is an open space – and we must defend this, otherwise we have nothing different to offer – they are sure to ‘infiltrate’; and if the Forum continues to grow in influence, they will attack or try and take over.
• The World Social Forum needs to urgently recognise the reality of 9/11 and its aftermath. It also needs to recognise the growing assault on democratic space across the world, whether through war or fundamentalism, along with the introduction of ever-greater ‘security’ measures, as a central feature of world politics at the present stage in history. Accordingly it needs to make the assertion, defence, and expansion of democratic space a central feature of its activities.
• There has to be a radical rethink on the question of ‘globalisation’. We need first to move from our singular obsession with economic or capitalist globalisation to looking at and relating to the host of other everyday globalisations that are taking place through the actions of peoples all over the world – and that are equally changing the world. These myriad globalisations have been taking place for the past many centuries, through the migration of workers, refugees, monks, and traders, and through the spread of religions and ideologies– and now also through global civil action. We need to accept that the Forum itself is globalisation made manifest – but that it is offering another globalisation.
• We need therefore to move from being mere spectators of economic and other globalisations to realising that we are actors not spectators, and that globalisations – and especially other globalisations - take place through us. In many ways, since economic globalisation was what the Forum started about, this also suggests some rethinking of the Forum itself.
• In general, the World Social Forum needs to think more strategically. In the same way that it chose to challenge the World Economic Forum, what it does has to be related to the larger developments in the world. It has to think of encouraging strategic relations between particular parts of the world; and to build bridges between different streams of civil and political actors.
• The World Social Forum also needs to specially open itself to building bridges with the world of faith. This is so both at this particular juncture in world history, with the relentless rise in religious fundamentalism that we are seeing, and in general, as a permanent programme.
• The year 2002 has seen a number of important developments in the world experiment that the World Social Forum constitutes. I believe that we now need to push ahead and take the next steps at this level:
• Move from seeing the Porto Alegre Forum as The World Social Forum and the others as being only ‘regional’ and thematic fora, to seeing them all as equal manifestations of the Forum
• Move towards far greater mass and public awareness building in between the big meetings
• Move towards more intensive exchange in between the big meetings, for all members of WSF committees, at national, regional, and global levels.
• A process of critical reflection should become a key accompanying part of the World Social Forum’s organisational work, both to review steps being taken and to develop a shared and strategic understanding of world events at national, regional, and global levels. The World Social Forum needs to make space for this.
• There has to be a struggle for defining comprehensive alternatives, and then to practice them. Simply opposing capitalist globalisation, when we use entirely conventional organisational structures and mobilisational processes, does not make us ‘alternative’, and can never do so.
• Given that the World Social Forum is meant to be an open plural process, embracing people of many different persuasions, we need to work to build an organisational process that is based on norms and principles that are openly and commonly defined, and not on gentlemanly or comradely behaviour between a few and that cannot be questioned by others.
More specifically, within India I believe we need to address certain questions in addition to the above:
• Comprehensively re-thinking and revising the structure we have created for WSF in India. This structure is widely seen as having been captured by the left – the formal left. And the secretariat has moved from being an executive arm of the Working Committee to being a power unto itself by virtue of having too many members of the Coordination Team on it and therefore with no one to guide it.
• Moving towards working for a culture of accountability. The present policy in WSF India of simply declaring meetings open does not necessarily make the process open or the participants accountable.
• Articulating policies and programmes that can help us to think and act both locally and globally and to ‘talk’ across streams of civil and political action.
• Carefully and strategically thinking about whether the 2004 WSF global meeting should be held in India : About whether civil India is in a position to host the 2004 WSF global meeting (in terms of organisational abilities and experience, and in terms of how far it has got in terms of building the culture of the World Social Forum in India) but more crucially, whether this is what all the organisations and individuals involved in WSF India should be focussing their attentions on over the coming year, at a time of rising fundamentalism and fascism in the country and region.
Will focussing on organising the world meeting strengthen the wider effort not merely to resist and fight these tendencies but to put forward credible alternatives, or will this divert attention and therefore be exactly what the fundamentalists and fascists would like to see ? The ramifications of fascism in India are far wider than India alone. This question is something that needs to be thought about not merely within India but also internationally – and the International Council needs to specifically consider how the World Social Forum can stand by the people and progressive organisations of India at this juncture; what its role should be.
I have two last suggestions that come out not from my analysis of the World Social Forum in India and internationally but from my hopes for the Asian Social Forum and for the World Social Forum process as a whole:
• Assess the Asian Social Forum in terms of the degree it was genuinely an Asian Social Forum, and as to what more now needs to be done to build a comprehensive Asian process.
• Use the opportunity of the Asian Social Forum and of other regional and thematic Fora, and of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, not only to discuss individual issues and to expose ourselves individually and organisationally to other ways of thinking, which are valuable activities in themselves, but also to find ways of building bridges: Between old movements and new, between old politics and new, between different streams of civil and political movement; and between movements and other streams of civil action and concern, including business, the creative world including the media, and the world of faith.
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(*) A civil activist and campaignist from the mid 70s, and an architect and urban designer by training, Jai Sen has been working since the early-mid 90s as an independent researcher on the history and dynamics of popular movement in India for a place to live, and more recently also on the internationalisation and globalisation of civil movement. He lived and worked out of Calcutta (now Kolkata) for many years, but now does so out of New Delhi. He is presently also a member of the WSF India Working Committee and of its Coordination Team. He can be contacted at jai.sen@vsnl.com or, while travelling out of India, at jai_sen2000@yahoo.com
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