REPORT.103 The Mumbai World Social Forum: Alternative Futures from the Grassroots Jose Maria Ramos Australian Foresight Institute Australia I recall an Indian proverb saying that, as all rivers What is the WSF and Why Does It Exist? find the same ocean, so too do all paths reach the same source. Perhaps this is a fitting analogy for the World The WSF is a global meeting of thinkers, artists, Social Forum (WSF), the fourth of which was recently writers, activists, documentarists and organisations, held in Mumbai India from the 16th - 21st of January. who come together in an "open space" format to dis- For as each of the over 130,000 droplets arrived by cuss the world's most pressing challenges and inhuman- plane, train, rickshaw, bicycle and by foot, they began ities. The WSF is more specifically a challenge to the self-organising into streams, thousands of organisations mono-logic (and assumed ortho-doxy) of neo-liberal emerged and merged into rivers of social movements, economics, the "Washington consensus" and its hand- which finally came together at the WSF to form an maidens, the IMF, World Bank and other programs that ocean of humanity united under the banner "another extend the power of a global corporate elite under the world is possible." While the WSF is a global event and misnomer of "development". deals with global scale problems, issues and challenges, The roots of the type of corporatist development it is driven from the grass roots. If the WSF is an ocean, being critiqued at the WSF can be traced back to the every "droplet" comes from a grassroots network, post-Bretton-Woods world economic order as framed organisation and the activism, involvement and educa- by the allied victors of WWII and, more specifically, 80-s tion of individuals. Unlike other global events, UN meet- neo-liberalism pushing-through the successive GATT ings, WTO ministerials, the World Economic Forum (General Agreement of Trade and Tariffs) "accords" as a (WEF) in Davos, where the halls of power are guarded way of eliminating trade barriers and of de-nationalising by body guards, and where a PhD, $30,000 or a govern- industries and resources.1 This led to and almost ubiqui- ment position are the minimum "accessories" for a tick- tous series of protests against the privatisation of et into the debate, the WSF draws from the "wretched resources in former colonial states and / or developing of the earth", the rich soil from which humanity springs. countries. For decades, grassroots movements emerged It is more appropriate to say that the WSF is a grass- throughout the "South" to protest World Bank projects roots event at the global level. The WSF is a culmination that displaced indigenous peoples, IMF structural of decades in the development of localised activism, adjustment programs that undermined public welfare organisation and education, the blossoming of local and and health systems, and global financial speculation that regional civil society into an emergent global civil socie- wrecked havoc on smaller economies, their currencies ty. It has become a grassroots global debate on the and stock markets. futures of humankind through a new blending between In the 90-s, the word globalisation came into the local and the global. vogue, describing a series of interconnecting phenome- na surrounding corporate globalisation, information Journal of Futures Studies, May 2004, 8(4): 103 - 110 Journal of Futures Studies communications technology systems, trans- sation, then what do you want?" In all fairness, nationalisation, a global "information economy", dozens of alternatives to corporate globalisa- "economic democracy" and the like. Much of tion have existed for years, but in an effort to this literature assumed a neo-liberal and corpo- create mass awareness of the problems within ratist understanding, that a global free market globalisation (which has largely been success- system was finally bringing the world together ful), "anti-globalists" picked up a very negative in a "golden straitjacket" and would ultimately media spin. help to modernise the "under-developed" In an effort to shift the debate from what world. What this literature missed or omitted globalisation social activists were against to the were the other "globalisations" under way, the proposals, visions, and alternatives that could globalisation of environmental issues which address the issues, one of the front-line groups increasingly cross borders, the globalisation of in the debate, Attac France, headed by Bernard security concerns, the globalisation of human Cassens, together with the Brazilian Workers rights movements against corporate and state Party, jointly proposed holding a "World Social crimes, the globalisation of consciousness, Forum" that would be open to the many people which challenges ethnocentric versions of reali- and groups that deserve to have a say in globali- ty and nation-based governance, and the emer- sation, but who are locked out of the elite halls gence of global civil society. of the WTO, WEF / Davos. The WSF would also The nascent anti-globalisation movement coincide with the World Economic Forum and which emerged in grass-roots form in the South be a contrast and parody of it. At the WEF, self- (although there were increasing signs that the appointed CEO "representatives" at $30,000 a UN-generated World Summits prepared the ter- head and other government functionaries come rain for these, especially the Copenhagen Social together to discuss global economic issues, development Summit in 1995 and others), while activists outside beg to have a voice in the emerged in full bloom in suburban USA in the debate, while at the WSF all people with a stake form of the "Battle of Seattle". By '99, corporate in globalisation are accepted, becoming part of globalisation was no longer just a threat to an open debate on the futures of the planet and indigenous peoples, but was also identified as a the direction of human development. threat to the "suburban north", their unions, Organised in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001- democracies, ecosystems, and human rights. 3, the first three WSFs were a huge success, Thus, a global anti-globalisation movement attracting thousands of people from all around focused strategically on putting the issue on the the world, from about 10,000 in the first forum map by targeting the major meeting places to 100,000 in the third. Because of the ethos of where neo-liberalism unfolds: the meetings of inclusion, open-ness to exploration of alterna- the World Trade Organisation, the World tives, respect for diversity and non-violence, the Economic Forum / Davos, for example, in the WSF attracted a dazzling and prolific number of hope that the media might cover such protests. progressive groups, activists, artists and thinkers. And yet, the WSF, which has had remark- Anti-global or Alter-global? able success in coordinating local-global The protest movement was successful at activism and become one of the key platforms putting the question mark on these processes for the proposal of renewed visions, innova- in the public mind, but was quickly character tions and alternatives for a more humane and assassinated by conventional media channels, sustainable world, has been given only the most protesters typified as disruptive activists, "anti" token and patronising references by the media. development Luddites, anarchistic misfits, and CNN for example, simply said in under 15 sec- the like. One criticism that emerged was the onds that "thousands of anti-globalisation pro- question: "If you don't want neo-liberal market testors meet in Mumbai" - end of story. 104 integration, if you are against corporate globali- In sharp contrast to the US media, which The Mumbai World Social Forum has shifted to the right over past decades,2 The time, that is bound to come. In any case, I Times India gave daily coverage of the event, don't think we should look at one alternative. That would be as bad as the neo-conservative quite sympathetically. But true to its tabloid vision. We need many alternatives to choose roots, when a scandal emerged involving a from. And in future, I am sure, we shall see a South African Judge and WSF participant over whole new set of alternatives that will bring an alleged rape, the paper was quick to shift together many of the single-issue movements much of its coverage on to the scandal, which we are seeing around us. I suspect that many was - in the end - exposed as false anyway. movements are moving towards new visions Besides transcending the banality of the global and new analytic frames; only the dying media empires and their deliberate distortion of movements, mostly guided by European social what counts as world events, one of the key thought sired by the age of imperialism, strategic points in the movement is to win the believe that they have the final clue to history. 3 struggle over globalisation "nomenclature". This camp's thinking sees the WSF as an How the issues are presented depends on the opportunity for mutual learning, deepening nature of the named and the "namer". connections, understanding, out of which will "Anti-globalisation protesters" has a nasty spring synthesis. And yet, the WSF would not ring to it, as do images of anarchists throwing exist if it were not for the drive and strategic rocks at armed police and other stereotypes commitment of a multiplicity of social move- typical of Hollywood's media culture of pack- ments, from women's empowerment, to the aged icons and archetypes. Particularly from the landless peasants, to Dalit rights, to the interna- vantage point of your average suburban sitting tional socialists and the greens. Success, defined at home with his or her children, one would in a variety of ways, has therefore been predi- want to stay as far away as possible from these cated on social movement - organised and dangerous and savage activists who block strategic social action.