Rendezvous at Mumbai

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 26, 2004, Pages 53-65

  Vanaik, Achin ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 1642385806     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (14)

1. Far from being a median category, the misnamed 'middle class' is better understood as a mass elite, comprising the top 10 to 15 per cent of Indian society. For a fuller treatment of the Indian economy's basic character, the rise to power of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata (Indian People's) Party (BJP) and institutionalization of Hindutva - the 'politics of Hinduness' - see my 'India's New Right', NLR 9, May-June 2001.
2. I am grateful to Abhijit Sen at Jawaharlal Nehru University for sharing data from his latest study, 'Poverty and Inequality in India: Getting Closer to the Truth', Economic and Political Weekly, forthcoming. There has been an intense debate in the EPW, to which Sen has made a key contribution, over the accuracy of poverty figures in India following the government's methodological changes in 1999-2000. His estimate for numbers below the poverty line in 2002, by 'monthly recall method', is 35 per cent of the Indian population, some 364 mllion people.
3. According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies: www.nasscom.org
4. A broad range of reports on different aspects of the Gujarat pogrom are available at www.onlinevolunteers.org
5. While the official tally of deaths in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots after the assassination of Mrs Gandhi was around 3,000, they pale in comparison to what happened in Gujarat. Although the local Congress leaders behind the 1984 violence have not been punished, the party has publicly apologized for what happened. The brutality and sadism, the scale, geographic extent and duration of communal violence were much greater in Gujarat, as was the degree of state-apparatus complicity. Given the deeper historical roots of anti-Muslim sentiment and the existence, in the Sangh, of a powerful grassroots organization dedicated to cultivating and exploiting it for political ends, the negative implications of Gujarat 2002 are much more profound.
6. In the 1999 Lok Sabha (People's Assembly) elections, the NDA won all the 23 seats of Haryana, Delhi, Himachal and Goa put together; 20 out of 26 in Gujarat, 36 out of 42 in Andhra Pradesh, 16 out of 25 in Rajasthan, 26 out of 39 in Tamil Nadu, 28 out of 48 in Maharashtra, 41 out of 54 in Bihar, 19 out of 21 in Orissa, 29 out of 40 in Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh.
7. Around 8 per cent of the overall population, Adivasis make up some 25 per cent of the electorate in the Central Indian forest/tribal belt also covering parts of Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh, where they are mainly small farmers, gatherers and hawkers of forest produce or informal-sector labourers. Long-term grassroots activism by RSS cadres has built up a network of Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams (the Sangh prefers the term vanvasi, forest dweller, to adivasi, since for them Aryans must be India's original inhabitants) catering to their welfare needs with clinics, dispensaries, etc. The RSS'S campaign of 'reconversion' to its own peculiar brand of Hinduism (a large proportion of Adivasis are Christians) has the appeal of psychological and cultural upliftment, through identification with a socially stronger and more prosperous 'Hindu' community. Aided by Congress complacency, and their own sophisticated micro-management of local electoral processes, the BJP has won 77 out of the 99 constituencies reserved for tribal candidates; the Congress carried sixteen.
8. Inadequate infrastructure obviously hampered discussion and mass participation, especially in the big conferences. This failing was linked to the otherwise laudable determination of the organizers to limit foreign funding and keep overall costs low - around $2.4m, a third that of Porto Alegre.
9. Approximate numbers of participants included: Middle East: 200, with Egypt, Palestine and Turkey (in that order) the largest contingents; China: 200; Japan: over 1,100; South Korea: 200; Philippines: 400; Sri Lanka: over 450; Bangladesh: over 1,200; Pakistan: 800; Bhutan: 500; Burma: 100; Nepal: over 1,300 (includes those resident in India); Thailand: 200; Malaysia: 50; Indonesia: 150; Afghanistan: 60. There were also 100 South Africans present, and 500 came from Kenya (the strongest African candidate for holding WSF 2006).
10. The remarkable diversity of Indian participation was ensured by the involvement of 190 organizations in the Indian General Council, the ultimate decision-making authority for the fourth WSF. Last year's Brazilian General Council comprised 8 organizations. The IGC nominated the main executive body, the Indian Organizing Committee, which in turn selected the Mumbai Organizing Committee. In the 10C the CPI, CPM, certain NGOS and a number of big Dalit organizations from southern India played major roles.
11. For the origins and prospects of the World Social Forum project see Tom Mettes, ed., A Movement of Movements, London 2004, passim.
12. The original Communist Party of India split in 1964, along broadly Moscow/ Beijing lines, into the CPI and CPM (Communist Party of India/Marxist). The CPM-led Left Front coalition has governed West Bengal, a province of over 60 million people, since 1977. Little different from any other state in its attempts to attract private capital through low labour costs, subsidized infrastructure and tax concessions, it is currently pushing through a Central government scheme for contract-hiring teachers at a miserable Rs. 1,500 a month, raising charges in schools and hospitals, and carrying out slum evictions in Kolkata (Calcutta). Nevertheless, it has a better than average record in agricultural growth, poverty alleviation, democratic devolution and - with proportionately the second largest Muslim population of any state - has made a genuine contribution to sustaining communal tranquility.
13. Though many of their criticisms are valid - the political limitations of the WSF as currently constituted; the continuing legitimacy in certain situations of violent self-defence; the dangers of NGO-ization, the ulterior motives of certain funding sources - none of this precluded their participation in the WSF, where they would have been free to argue these points. Respect for the role played by some of the groups in MR in defending the poorest sections of society (this is certainly the case in India) should not prevent a counter-critique of their time-warp politics and unfortunate sectarianism.
14. Keynote speakers: Imperialist globalization: Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin, Walden Bello, Arundhati Roy, Abdul Amir Al-Rekaby (Iraqi National Democratic Coalition); Gender. Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt), Saher Saba (Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan), Brinda Karat (CPM); Militarism: Jeremy Corbyn (UK), Dennis Brutus (South Africa), Muto Ichiyo (Japan), Chandra Muzzafar (Malaysia), Beverley Keene (Jubilee South, Argentina), Nguyen Binh (Vietnam), Mustafa Barghouti (Palestinian National Initiative); Religious fundamentalism: Shirin Ebadi (Iran), Pervez Hoodbhoy (Pakistan), Tanika Sarkar (India); Casteism: Blanca Chancoso (Ecuador), Ram Dayal Munda (Jharkhand tribals' leader), Gopal Guru (Dalit intellectual); Food and water sovereignty: Maud Barlow (Canada), José Bové (France), Medha Patkar (India); Media: N. Ram (editor of The Hindu and Frontline), Richard Stallman (Free Software Foundation), Roberto Savio (Inter Press Service, Italy), Bernard Cassen (Monde diplomatique); Parties and movements: Fausto Bertinotti (Rifondazione, Italy), Aruna Roy (Right to Information Campaign), Luis Ayala (Chile), Alejandro Bendana (Nicaragua) Prakash Karat (CPM), D. Raja (CPI).