Over 100,000 people gathered in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) in India for the World Social Forum last week. But what did it achieve? Helen Shawobserves social globalisation in action.
The auto-rickshaw drivers were bemused by the thousands of foreigners, speaking a babel of languages, struggling to get to the dusty fields north of Mumbai where the World Social Forum was being held.
"What's it all about?" one driver asked in Hindi. "It's about social development," an Indian friend answered lamely. The drivers happily tripled their prices. The free market in operation.
In the midst of the chanting rallies and indigenous tribes, the fields resembled a cross between Woodstock, an ANC stadium rally in Soweto and an Irish political "monster meeting" from the past. Crowds, colour, drums, chanting, slogans, dancing and singing; a sensory feast with global names such as Mary Robinson, Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, economist Joe Stiglitz, writer Arundhati Roy, musician Gilberto Gil and Winnie Mandela all pulling audiences.
The shorthand for World Social Forum is "anti-globalisation" and the organisers banned all corporate products such as Coke, Pepsi, branded bottled water or Microsoft. Yet the forum itself speaks of another form of globalisation where crimson-robed Tibetan monks chant side by side with Dalits, the "untouchables" of the lower caste in India, and where South African KwaZulus and a Nepalese women's group joined in the old ANC cry "Amandla" - power to the people.
On the surface the six-day event's sound and fury seemed to underscore the poor's lack of power and indeed lack of an international voice, given the absence of the mainstream media. Yet behind the circus of protests, rallies and banners something more subtle was forming - a global leadership within the developing world. It is, in part, highlighted this week by the presence of Brazil's President, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, in India for the country's Republics Day celebrations.
Carlos Lopez, the United Nations Development Programme's director in Brazil, sees the bridges being built across the developing world as one of the most encouraging aspects of these events. The first three WSFs were held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, largely as an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, but this forum, the first in Asia where the bulk of the world's poor live, showed the growing solidarity between Brazil and India. These countries, along with South Africa, are forming an alternative international lobby on development, trade and international aid.
This was seen in Cancun, Mexico last September during the World Trade Organisation talks, when the combined strength of Brazil and India blocked agreement. It is a lobby which is growing at the political, non-governmental and grassroot levels.
Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz, one of the speakers who went straight to Davos from Mumbai, argued for a more nuanced view of globalisation, recognising the benefits it has brought, in growth, to south east Asia in comparison with Africa.
For him the merit of the WSF is the creation of a global lobby on issues such as debt, poverty, trade and aid, and the recognition that the solidarity of countries such as India and Brazil can rebalance power with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The former World Bank economist argued that no trade agreement was better than a bad one and that Cancun was a watershed with the voice of the developing economies emerging.
He stressed that while globalisation did bring growth, unless it is linked to human rights it will increase poverty and violence. Globalisation emphasised the need to create global public goods, in health, knowledge and security. The interest on the developing world's reserves, estimated at $50 billion buried in low interest bonds, should be used to fund these global goods rather than acting as foreign aid to the US, he said.
India itself is an economy rapidly changing through the global movement of work and money. With growth of over 8 per cent it has the most marked extremes of poverty and wealth. Just hours from the conference, in stark contrast to the Mumbai slums, the "new" India, built on "off-shoring" IT jobs and services, is rising. On the outskirts of Pune, a new high-tech centre is providing thousands of jobs for young Indians. Like Bangalore and Hyderabad, it forms part of India's silicon valley.
The Indian corporations, such as Wipro, are confident this is just the beginning. India with its one billion people has a well-educated, English-speaking, young professional middle class. While the rights of workers are extremely limited, they were so before the IT boom,
and many people say they fare better with international employers than with Indian companies. Growing employment may make it easier to argue for labour rights or Stiglitz's ideal of global public goods. The question will be whether the increased prosperity of India will touch the 400 million struggling to survive.
Brazilian Laura Tavares believes the WSF gives the poor a voice but argues that instead of it coming back to Brazil next year it should go to Africa so the agenda can expand. While Mumbai was often a chaotic cacophony of sounds, it did successfully engage the grassroots.
When the conferences halls were addressed by the likes of Mary Robinson, outside in the noisy melee there were "monster meetings" where speakers, usually local community activists, enthralled the crowd.
Beyond the rhetoric and cant, several positives emerged; a growing awareness of the power of the new political and social alliance of Brazil, India and South Africa and the practical interaction of community activists from across the continents. Many, like the anti-caste movement, strengthened their network within India itself.
Others from Bangkok to Johannesburg to Bangalore swapped stories on issues such as AIDS. Social globalisation in action.
Helen Shaw, who is director of Athena Media Ltd, a broadcast production company, attended the World Social Forum to make a documentary