March 2004

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Mumbai World Social Forum: A Festival of Resistance

Since the 1980s, Oupa Lehulere has conducted research and performed education work for the South African Trade Union movement. He works at the Community Division of Khanya College in Johannesburg, promoting trade union education.

Cast Out Caste demonstration at the WSF, Jan. 16, 2004 Photo: www.simone.bruno.name

I landed in Mumbai on a hot and humid January morning, and from the onset it was clear that the move of the World Social Forum (WSF) to Mumbai had more than a geographic significance. The first three editions of the World Social Forum were held in the city of Porto Alegre, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The choice of Porto Alegre as the host city was not only because of the deep-rooted traditions of mobilization by popular organizations in Brazil, but also because the Workers' Party, itself a product of the mobilization, was in power in both the state and the city.

Like Brazil, India has deep-rooted traditions of mass mobilization against all kinds of injustice. Unlike Porto Alegre, neither Mumbai, nor the state of Maharashtra, is controlled by a left party. And so for the first time the World Social Forum moved into a region permeated by neoliberal capitalism, strict social heirarchies, and heavy doses of nationalism.

WSF, Jan. 21, 2004, www.simone.bruno.name

Here in Mumbai, the WSF came face to face with extreme poverty and inequality, religious fundamentalism, a violent system of upper and lower castes, a ruling class that is not only very acquisitive, but has grown immune to the poverty around it.

As I walked out of the rather run-down airport - nothing like Johannesburg International - I was greeted by a large Samsung cell-phone billboard asking the new middle classes to do what they do best: to be in love with themselves.

Under this billboard hundreds of taxis from an old automotive era, and the three-wheeled tuk-tuks, were patiently parked. These tuk-tuk drivers are the face of India's informal sector, which by some estimates make up to 80% of the workforce. As I drove in the tuk-tuk to the hotel, it became clear that the WSF had come home.

The idea for a World Social Forum was first proposed following the anti-corporate-globalization demonstrations in Seattle at the end of 1999. The collapse of the World Trade Organization talks gave impetus to the global movement against neoliberalism. Seattle showed that the triumphal march of the neoliberal troops could be halted, even if temporarily. The slogan of the WSF, "Another World is Possible," is testimony to this new mood of optimism. The Charter of the WSF defines the forum as a "space for reflective thinking, democratic debate," where activists and popular organizations can interlink for "effective action." The WSF welcomes all who are "opposed to neoliberalism and to domination by capital and imperialism."

Demonstrating for the 100,000 Nepali-speaking refugees, forced out of Bhutan and in refugee camps since 1990, at the WSF, Jan. 17, 2004. Photo: www.simone.bruno.name

In Mumbai, domination by capital is both a social and physical reality. Unlike South Africa, where the power of the rich is expressed by a geographic apartheid, in Mumbai all the famous hangouts of the rich - the Hyatt, the Sheraton, the Intercontinental and the Leela Hotels - are situated right in the middle of our Alexandra township. From air-conditioned rooms, India's rich can look out and celebrate their conquest: a (seemingly) broken working class. In Mumbai, the themes of poverty and inequality - the main business of the WSF - were forever in our midst.

Indeed, the venue for the WSF had the feel of large abandoned factories surrounded by shanty-towns. No air-conditioned rooms here: only dust, meeting rooms made out of sacks, the smell of sewage, and more dust. No Sandton convention center for the all the celebrities, no marble-floored restaurants for the meal between meetings, but only standing room in the hot sun and dusty open spaces that passed for restaurants. The food was cheap and delicious, served on dishes made from leaves.

Located in the northern part of the city, far away from the stomping grounds of the rich and famous in the south, the WSF was housed close to another casualty of globalization - Mumbai's industries and factories. Mumbai is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra, one of the most industrialized and mineral-rich states of India. Mumbai's "development" was fueled by the discovery of oil in the 1970s, and it is home to India's huge film industry - Bollywood. That archetype of globalization, the financier and speculator, also lives here in Mumbai.

The oldest and the largest industry, however, is the cotton textile industry. Like many of its counterparts elsewhere in the world, the local textile industry is under enormous pressure. Textile mills have been closing and have added to the already large pool of the unemployed and informal sector.

The Leela Hotel, a five-star deluxe hotel, stands on the ruins of one of the big textile factories in the city. The factory was closed after a long and bitter strike by workers resisting low wages and retrenchments. Another industry, petrochemicals, is undergoing privatization, and the Indian Minister of Privatization issued promissory notes in Davos, at the World Economic Forum (the WSF of the rich), while waxing lyrical about the progress of privatization of state-owned enterprises in India. The airports, state-owned banks, and many other institutions were under the hammer as the WSF met in Mumbai. Of course, many an activist and many organizations spent days and nights at the WSF strategizing about how to counter this wave of privatization.

The woman on the Samsung billboard who loves herself is not only a symbol of India's integration into neoliberal globalization: she is also white, and therefore a symbol of the dominance of India's fair-skinned upper caste over the darker-skinned Dalits ("untouchables") and Adivasis (indigenous peoples). And so one of the major themes of the WSF in India was the issue of caste, racism, and social exclusion. Unlike many of the global forums I have seen, at this one, the socially excluded, India's lower castes, were out in force.

The Dalits, the Adivasis, and all those trapped in India's caste-based social division of labor made their presence felt, not only in the seminars and conference rooms, but also by huge marches throughout the forum. No space and no moment was spared in the quest to put the issues of the Dalits and Adivasis on the table. In between meetings, during meal breaks, early in the morning and right into the night, the drums beat non-stop, guerrilla theater on all manner of themes was all around us, and in a way that Porto Alegre could not be, the WSF became a festival of the oppressed.

The Dalits and Adivasis were joined by all strata of the oppressed: industrial workers, those in the informal sector, Buddhist monks marching by candlelight, Catholic nuns engaging in discussions with passers-by in the streets, and many others. The din of the drum gave a sense of realism to the proceedings: you knew that the pogroms of Gujarat were a stone's throw away; you knew that you were in the belly the beast.

The WSF is referred to as a jamboree in many accounts: all talk and no strategy or action. Indeed, the superficial observer can be fooled by the hundreds of plenaries, workshops, dialogues, panels, roundtables, and seminars. WSF-Mumbai had one major public meeting (20,000-plus people), 12 conferences (5,000-plus), and 300 workshops every day! This does not count the thousands of small meetings, chance encounters in the evenings, and discussions into the wee hours of the morning. Many of these meetings, however, are strategy sessions where organizations forge agreement about how to coordinate future actions.

The global scope of the February 15, 2003 anti-war rallies, which brought millions into the streets, was made possible by WSF-2003. The present and ongoing crisis in the war camp would be unimaginable if it had not been for the depth of mobilization of February 15. Indeed, spirits at WSF-Mumbai were buoyed by the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancún, and strategies were discussed for the next encounter with the WTO in Hong Kong later this year. The global anti-war movement held a day-long strategy session and made a number of important decisions - including a call for a day of mobilization to get US troops out of Iraq. Activists from the Iraqi resistance addressed the meeting, and so did activists from the Palestinian Intifada.

It would of course be misleading to judge the WSF on the number of 'global' campaigns decided at its meeting. The real meaning of the WSF is to be found in the rising wave of resistance to neoliberal globalization and imperialism in country after country.

Long gone are the days when the US state department bureaucrat-turned-philosopher, Fukuyama, could pronounce history to be at an end. WSF-Mumbai confirmed a major sea-change in politics that had been in the making over the last five years: capitalism, imperialism, exploitation, and all the other beasts that went missing two decades ago, have been found.

As I bade farewell to Mumbai, and drove past the largest slum in the whole of Asia, I took a deep breath and filled my lungs with the thick pollution of India's highways. Coming up in front of me was a giant billboard: No More Bophal! At last the image of the Samsung billboard had come face to face with the people.

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