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Reflective thinking and debate are not enough. This is the voice of opposition that the 75,000-odd participants of the World Social Forum will hear when Mumbai Resistance-2004 runs its parallel show in the city from January 17 to 20. In principle, the organisers of MR-2004 agree that there is a need to be concerned about the growing influence of globalisation and imperialism. The dissent arises out of the fact that they see the World Social Forum's call of "Another World is Possible" as too amorphous. The protest against the domineering forces of the capitalists can be effective only if there is a "militant and sustained struggle against imperialist globalisation and war," according to Mumbai Resistance. MR-2004 was conceived at the International Camp, Thessaloniki Resistance 2003, held in Greece in June that year. It took a more concrete form when the International Coordinating Group of the International League of Peoples' Struggles (ILPS), a coalition of over 100 struggling people's organisations from different parts of the world, resolved at its meetings in the Netherlands in July 2003 to organise an event at the same time as the WSF to consolidate and strengthen the anti-imperialist movement. Therefore, while MR-2004 finds no fault with the underlying objectives of the WSF, it attempts to create its own platform with the belief that "the battle against globalisation will be a long and protracted one and will be fought on many fronts and in many forms." In that respect, it stands for and supports all militant mobilisations and rests faith in the violent scenarios witnessed in the street battles of Seattle and Melbourne, the Intifada of the Palestinian people, the successful overthrowing of pro-imperialist dictators in countries like Philippines and Indonesia, the valiant battles of the indigenous and tribal peoples of the Chiapas, Nepal, Columbia, Peru, Turkey and India as also the growing resistance of the people of Iraq to US occupation. The need of the hour, defined by MR-2004, is to move towards a genuine socialist order and highlight questions like: How to identify the crucial issues and develop the force of the peoples' movements into a powerful challenge to the forces of imperialist globalisation and war. How to stand up to those who crush the sovereignty of nations, who idealise and support a market-centred rather than people-centred pattern of development. How to correctly identify the enemy and distinguish real friends from those who only posture as being against globalisation. The thinkers and planners behind MR-2004 have a strong feeling that the WSF "is so designed as to camouflage the crucial issues, thereby defusing the struggle against imperialist globalisation, rather than giving a focus to it." Further, the WSF is seen to offer no real alternative, ensuring that much of the debate remains at best intellectual sparring without leading to any real conclusion. In the same vein, MR-2004 questions the need for inviting establishment politicians known to have supported and even initiated programmes and policies in favour of globalisation and war as also the role of the funding agencies backing the WSF. The bottom line is clear: the rapacious plunder of the backward countries of the world - their economies, natural and human resources, agriculture and other forms of wealth - has to stop. This includes a resolve to fight the increasing marginalisation of all sections of the oppressed masses crushed under the weight of globalisation, particularly the socially oppressed groups. In India , for instance, the Adivasis constitute 7% of the population and MR-2004 feels concerned about how they are being systematically driven off their lands and pushed further and further to the fringes of the socio-economic system. Some of the speakers expected to attend MR-2004 include Bangladesh-based Badruddin Umar, Crispin Beltran, chair-person of the ILPS, Dr K R Chaudhary, an expert in agricultural economics, lawyer Nandita Haksar and Dr Manoranjan Mohanty, civil rights activist. Source: www.mumbairesistance.org and www.opendemocracy.net InfoChange News & Features, January 2004
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