The January 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai promises to be an eye opener. Never before has such a massive gathering of activists held in India. The Asian Social Forum (ASF) in Hyderabad in January 2003, though was a significant event in developing resistance to neo-liberal globalisation and emerging fascist forces in the country, was focused only on the continent’s problems and experiences. In Mumbai, the canvas will be much broader.

The Mumbai WSF process began in September 2001 with an international team setting up a meeting with Indian groups in Bangalore. This meeting explored the possibility of India hosting the World Social Forum in 2003/2004 and also to initiate a WSF India process. The Bangalore meeting decided to call a consultation in New Delhi.

The Delhi Consultation in January 2002 was attended by a number of groups and an ad hoc committee was formed. The Delhi Consultation also decided that India should offer to host the WSF event in 2004 and authorised the ad hoc committee to make such an offer to the International Council. It was further decided that a national level consultation would be held following the Porto Alegre WSF and after the International Council responded to the offer. The Council accepted the offer in principle, but left a final decision open. An overwhelming majority of the Indian participants in Porto Alegre endorsed the offer emerging from the Delhi Consultation.

The ad hoc committee then began the process of formalising the WSF India. After a set of meetings, a national consultation in Bhopal during 19-20 April 2002 evolved the broad organisational structure of the WSF India. It also decided that in India, the WSF should not be viewed only as an event but also as a process. It further decided to explore the possibility of holding not only a WSF India event, but also an Asian event. The consultation process finally culminated in choosing Hyderabad as the venue for the Asian Social Forum.

Asian Social Forum 2003
The Asian Social Forum was a six-day event from 2 January 2003. It was one of the largest programmes organised by movements and groups in Asia. As many as 860 organisations from 42 countries participated in the ASF where 160 seminars and 164 workshops were held. It had about 15,500 registered delegates and another 800 in the youth camp. Apart from this, there were about 2,000 cultural activists, 1,000 volunteers and a large number of unregistered participants. The number of people who attended would have been anywhere between 20,000-25,000. Out of this, registered foreign delegates were about 780.

The ASF brought together a very large number of groups from the country cutting across ideological and organisational lines. Both in the number of participants and in content, ASF as an open space was able to represent the rich diversity of movements and opinions in the country.
The cultural programmes had various components. There were a large number of street theatre groups who put up their plays in the venue. There were proscenium plays that were performed at the Indira Priyadarshini theatre. There were also songs and poetry readings. There was also a film festival (both documentary and feature). About 100 films were shown in four venues. The Voices of the Peoples programme had presentations from 16 groups including six from other parts of Asia.

There were eight major conferences organised at the ASF. Out of this, two of the conferences - the women’s and dalit conferences - were WSF events, while six conferences were sponsored by different organisations or group of organisations. The opening and closing plenary were staged as open meetings with an appropriate mix of speakers from different countries and ideological streams.
Social movements from Asia - mass organisations, new social movements and various other groups - met during the ASF and worked out not only a declaration comprising the common positions on major issues but also a Charter of Resistance. This included resistance to war on Iraq and a campaign for derailing the Cancun inter-ministerial meeting of WTO.

Most of the workshops were well-attended and the discussions lively. The conferences, which were organised by a number of NGOs and mass organisations, were also well-attended and drew a positive response from the participants. There have been discussions regarding the success or otherwise of the ‘open space’ concept of WSF. Going by the very large number of groups that came with their programmes, the ‘open space’ concept was very much in evidence.

A remarkable feature of the ASF event was the vibrant and visible participation of all the groups that came to Hyderabad. The diversity of the groups from the Left, Gandhian, Dalit to NGOs and the sense of a common purpose to fight against globalisation, communalism and war stood them apart.

The WSF India Process
The process of WSF India had one significant difference from the Brazilian process. In Brazil, certain organisations had taken the initiative for the WSF process. In WSF India, it was individuals, most of them belonging to important organisations or movements, who took the initiative. As a result, the organisations got involved in varying degrees based on their own perceptions of WSF or on the ability of those individuals to involve their organisations. This resulted in two problems. One is that the process was perceived to be not as inclusive as it should have been, particularly by groups who did not get involved initially or were contacted late. The second is that the organisations that came into the WSF India Process had varying degrees of ‘ownership.’

The second difference is that the international process is generally anchored to the annual WSF event. In India, all the organisations at the state level jointly ran a mobilisation campaign on the WSF Charter. The other part of the WSF process that was skewed was the very thin level of support that was received from the major movements in the country. Any future WSF event in India must raise funds locally: this is a political need for its credibility. If this is done, flow of external funds for an international event would have much less problems.

The WSF India process should not be seen as a united front where everybody is expected to merge their views into a common minimum programme. Therefore, the attempt should be to find space for different views, different organisational styles and ethos so that we give expression to our diversity and plurality. The anti-globalisation struggle is much larger than the WSF and has to be fought by mass movements. The WSF process and events can catalyse a larger unity and create a space for dialogue.