INDIA: Delegates came from 132 countries to the first World Social Forum in Asia, held in Bombay. Rahul Bedi reports.
Tens of thousands of activists from around the world marched through the streets of India's financial capital, Bombay, on Wednesday, shouting anti-war and anti-capitalist slogans to mark the end of the biggest anti-globalisation gathering.
After nearly a week of colourful protests, film shows and intense debates opposing the Iraq war, US imperialism, free-market economies, racial and caste oppression, Africa's AIDS crisis and even organic farming, the World Social Forum ended with a 7km march that disrupted life for hours in the centre of the western Indian port city.
And while left-wing activists formed the overwhelming majority, forum participants covered a wide range of non-governmental organisations that included villagers from Kenya, European aid workers, Hiroshima atom-bomb survivors and tribe members from remote parts of Asia.
Dancing and waving banners at the end of the forum, delegates chanted their slogan - "Another World is Possible" - as they congregated at a large park where they were addressed by speakers such as K.R. Narayan, who rose to be India's president despite his low-caste background.
The Bombay meeting, attended by more than 100,000 delegates from 132 countries, opened last week. It was the first World Social Forum in Asia, home to more than half the world's population but less involved or represented in the anti-globalisation movement.
Mr Joseph Stiglitz, a critic of the World Bank where he was chief economist from 1997-2000, said new people needed to be put in charge of lending institutions. "Economic policy cannot be delegated to the technocrats of international financial institutions," he said. One needs to reform globalisation to make it work for developing countries.
Around 400 lawmakers from around the world drafted a resolution to oppose the foreign policy of President Bush. "We strongly oppose the unilateralist military and political intervention of the US in Iraq and other countries," the declaration said.
To dramatise the need for fair trade, a group of activists led a march to Dharavi, one of Asia's largest slums, which is close to Bombay's airport. It has an estimated population of more than one million.
Standing next to the sea of makeshift tin-roofed homes and open sewers, they symbolically launched a free trade banner depicting a globe made of entwined human figures that will be carried around the world.
Low-caste Hindus, known as Dalits and "untouchables," were among the most prominent at the forum, holding noisy rallies to demand an end to generations of discrimination. Their feet chained to symbolise oppression, groups of Dalits marched through Bombay's streets yesterday. Critics of the gathering said it was a highly expensive talking shop, out of touch with ground realities. "To have a Woodstock-type fest that clumps all the ills of the world in one basket, hoping for someone to pick up and throw the basket into the sea is naive," the widely-circulated Hindustan Times said yesterday.
And in an editorial entitled "If you believe in fairies" it declared that the problem with the forum's votaries was that apart from being trapped by state communist jargon they were unable to offer a credible alternative vision to the world of private enterprise.