The media in India - both the print and the audio-visual - has either outrightly trashed the WSF 04 or has raised very fundamental ethical and political questions about what in their version looks like a pointless jumboree of anti-globalisation groups from God knows where. Even those who were willing to write positive things about WSF focused either on the sensational or the iconic. The skeptics of course wondered aloud whether we managed to make another world in the week's time!
From: "ravikant"
To:
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 1:31 PM
Subject: [Reader-list] WSF - another report is possible!
Thankfully, I was there. So I have another view of what was going on at WSF.
Yes, I was there but I don't think any one person or even a few people can give you a full sense of what was happening when a whole sea of humanity tried to make itself heard. I will try and present a few word-sketches and some fragments. At the outset, I feel like congratulating the organisers who efficiently managed a very impressive show wothout crying hoarse from the microphones. ot without guiding traffic. After the morning of the second day's chaos about the non-availabilty of printed programs, it was all smooth and clean. The toilets, the foodstalls, the panels were all set and running after a few initial hiccups - when people were still trying to figure out what was happening at what place and could not make to the stipulated venues at the right time. I think the organisers relied too much and and too soon on the geographical intelligence of the visitors. In retrospect, this made for a very unobtrusive 'wrok environment'. To give you one small example, everytime the tubelight or the fan( it was really stuffy!) went off when somebody shook the stall wall, we would find a mechanic within five mnutes! The loos were kept sparkling clean, the food was cheap, non-spicey and diverse. One alternative shop was selling 'kokam-NOT-COKE' for five rupees.
Starting with the first, when the Pakistani sufi band Junoon had everyone of the 50, 000-strong crowd in thrall, every evening was marked by screenings of films or plays or song-and dance performances. In fact, some of the more famous shows( a Brazilian band and one African group) spilled over into the city whose night life is amazing by Delhi's austere and conservative standards. It is also equally remarkable that the city absorbed the huge crowd without straining its public and private resources. A much smaller rally in Delhi would have resulted in endless traffic jams and general public outcry of gruesome violation by unwanted non-city elements. I don't think we heard even a murmur of protest. In fact, if the conversations one had with the autowallas are any index, the city appeared quite obliviuos of such a major event. The autowallas of course sensed quick business opportunity and flocked in large numbers to the Nesco ground in Goregaon, which was very convenient. The entry to the venue was also easy - there were at least 60 counters for registration. Anybody could buy a 5-rupee coupon and get in. So one could not see any unmanageble Qs getting formed, which is what one is used to at Delhi's Pragati Maidan book fair or trade fair.
What was it like being inside? Frankly, it was quite overwhelming and it was impossible not to loose focus. What do you when you have to watch an endless stream of protest marches through the main throughfares? Protest marches from various parts of the world - forming into small bands, singing, dancing or blowing strange bugles, or beating a variety of drums, marches with half a km long banners, or with 20-feet high stilt-walkers, marches distributing multicoloured pamphlets. The entire ground and the poles and trees was festooned with posters of innumerable intent, design, content, size and colour. Some were pre-made and some were cooked on and for the occasion. In fact you could scarcely find space for your own poster if you had missed the first day. And civilised people do not tear off somebody else's poster to make room for their own. But the way out was distributing handouts - about your movement, about the issues that bother you, any information about your panel, event or stall that you wish to share with you don't want to know whom but you know that that somebody will be interested.
As you could expect, it was a multilingual space - people wanting to get heard had translated their stuff into English, and people who could not understand English had made their own arrangements, like this very efficient Korean group which was seen herding together adjacent to a venue, listening to simultaneous translation and radio transmission, as eagerly and seriously as some of us did in those cricket's radio commentary days. People were there to express solidarity, to collect and give information, to buy and sell books, to talk and to listen, of course. But they were also there to just be there and to feel a certain thereness. So, beyond a point language was a non-issue. One could hear peer-to-peer announcements, but also one-to-all announcements - in various languages. And that to me was the strength and beauty of such a gathering. The WSF was multitudinous and contradictory. Only hegemonistic designs insist on slavish agreements. Here people amply demonstrated that it was possible to disagree and yet inhabit the same civic and political space. Like the filmmaker who was collecting signatures against the organisers who did/could not a screening of his film on Gujarat. I saw that he found whole lot of willing signatories.
On the basis of all this one can say that while mainstream Indian, national media misreported the event, the Mumbai Resistance group miscalculated its scope. It could very well have protested against WSF from within and could have hoped to have got heard more!
That's it readers for now. Thanks for your patience. I hope to write more in coming days. Comments, reflections and add-ons are most welcome.
cheers
ravikant
From: "Shuddhabrata Sengupta"
To:
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 4:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] WSF - another report is possible!
Thank you Ravikant for your most vivid report on the WSF in Mumbai. As someone who was present (briefly) at WSF, I cannot but echo my own delight in the the diversity, enthusiasm and verve that I saw at WSF, and which Ravikant's report evokes. Of course, it was like a 'Kumbh Mela' a gigantic conglomeration where everyone and their uncle had pitched their tent. But that perhaps, was precisely what was valuable. The sense of equivalence, which made an obscure anarchist group from a marginal constituency present in the same space as the most established and well funded ngo, or mass organization of a political party. To the bystander, or the interested and curious forager from stall to stall, both would have to ultimately be judged by the quality of their arguments, and the conviviality and enthusiasm that they brought to bear on any interaction with the public at large. This arrangement made it possible to 'surf' the WSF in a way that made for many discoveries, unexpected and often pleasant surprises, and a tolerance that enabled the smallest voice or the group with no folk dancers but a long and colourful banner, to be registered on to the consciousness of those (like me) who were present.
As Ravikant has painted a bright and clear picture of the atmosphere, I will stick to some encounters that I found interesting and also describe some of the panels that I attended and participated in.
I also want to place on record here my utter disgust with the cavalier and motivated reporting of the event that took place almost throughout the English language press and electronic media. Barring the Hindu, and the city pages of the Mumbai Times of India not a single English language newspaper has made any attempt at any serious reportage. Generally, the event was covered in a facetious and smug fashion, with much ill informed jeering and jibes (in editorials, op eds, reports, box items etc) at the 'character' of the event. Having participated in the event, I now get a real sense of how shallow media coverage can be. This means that i cannot but take everything that the media here reports (as an event) with a generous handful of salts. These hired hacks, and tv divas (Barkha Dutt's extremely partisan 'We The People' on NDTV was pathetic) have had their day, and anyone who takes them, or their whining seriously anymore, does so only at peril to their own self respect. At least this the WSF could prove - the mainstream media in India is a sad sham shadow of a tacky spectacle machine, obsessed with the agendas of the same boring idiots who grace it. Another media may or may not be immediately possible, but I think that for our collective sanity, it is certainly desirable.
Anyway, to come back to the WSF, for me the most important thing was the fact that the global umbrella like character of the deliberations also ensured that a lot of things that get left unsaid or silenced in fora in India actually got said. This meant for instance, that there were more than one panel on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, where matters were discussed in a serious, and not always rhetorical manner. It also meant that sex workers, sexual minorities, unorganized workers, migrants, peasants, activists working with prisoners, small publishers, free software enthusiasts could all find their place under the sun at Goregaon. This is not to enthuse over some 'Rainbow Coalition' of the alternative political spectrum, or to exult on the bigness of the big tent, but to suggest an alternative, caravan mode of politics. There is clearly a journey underway all over the world, and different kinds of people are pitching their tents in the clearing that marks the zone of interesections between their respective journeys as people navigate their own tracks, and plan the trajectories of the immediate future. This zone of intersections becomes a space for new conversations, alliances, and the circulation and sharing of knowledge and experience. The caravan makes its way, haphazardly, with arguments, with no clear map or compass - but the gatheing together of the tents, the directions that people have come from and the directions that they are going to, together, suggest the contours of the journey. That is what I found most interesting of all about the WSF. The possibility that a human rights activist from Kashmir might marvel at the laughter of a Malaysian sex worker, and that a professor of economics might begin to learn something about the political economy of free sottware.
In one panel, the title of the panel - Zones of Occupation - Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir - said all that needed to be said. In another, (one that I attended), on Kashmir - The Way Ahead, organised by a Kerala based Human Rights organization, the speakers included Mohammed Yasin Malik from the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and Parvez Hoodhboy and Karamat Ali from Pakistan. I found the attentive and respectful atmosphere at this panel quite remarkable. Yasin Malik spoke freely and at length, he talked about the sense of betrayal he felt because Indian intellectuals, liberals and especially Gandhians (for some reason he singled out Gandhians although he spoke with great regard for Gandhi) had refused to take a categorical stand against state terror in Kashmir. He also offered a public apology to the Kashmiri Pandits who had left the valley, and expressed the hope that they can return to a peaceful valley soon. A heckler did rise to interrupt him on a few occasions, but the crowd, which must have been about 300-400 strong, insisted that Yasin Malik be heard.
Yasin Malik is not a remarkable speaker, nor did he say anything particularly significant or electrifying. But I think the very fact that a Kashmiri activist with the kind of views that Yasin Malik has was heard and applauded enthusiastically in an open public gathering in a city where Bal Thackeray still calls the shots is in itself salutary. This may have been impossible without the aegis of the WSF. What it meant was that many people, in many gatherings of the kind that I have just described throught the week that the WSF was in Mumbai, were exposed to, and discussed, and argued about things that are increasingly difficult to talk about, and sometimes even to imagine. If nothing else, it sets a precedent, it means, that the next time someone wants to hold a public discussion on something highly contentious, or very marginal, they may take that one step away from self censorship that has infected so many of us living in India today.
To come back to this meeting, for me, the highlight was the brief intervention made by Karamat Ali from Pakistan. With great gentleness and good humour he took apart the armour of nationalism that every south asian state uses to cover up its rotten vitals. He spoke of the way in which India and Pakistan have trodden over the aspirations of peace and freedom of all the peoples of South Asia, and hoped that instead of always falling back on a half remembered history of mystic harmony and togetherness, we can actually begin to take steps to make our present, and our immediate futures in South Asia more livable. In the context of Kashmir, this clearly meant the need to evolve imaginative and pragmatic solutions for the total demilitarization of all of Jammu and Kashmir (including both Indian occupied and Pakistani occupied parts of the Kashmir valley) within the ambit of a loose South Asian structure that can bypass the paralytic binary of the India-Pakistan gambit and measures to restore contact between people on both sides of the line of control
I came away from the Kashmir panel and after Karamat Ali spoke feeling that after a long time, I had heard someone talking sense about Kashmir.
Another panel that I went to (where I was invited at the last moment to speak) was titled 'LIfe After Capitalism'. Now, I wont bore you with what I said, but what struck me was how much of a time warp many leftists of the stalinist-maoist variety still live in. Although the majority of the speakers (myself included) actually tried to focus on what Capitalism is like today, as a global system, and how a society (necessarily expressed globally and not in/through nation states) that overcomes it might have to make arrangements to continue with everyday life on a global scale (the old question of how things are going to be made, distributed, decided, etc.) , our stalinist-maoist (Sta & Ma) comrades only found it necessary to denounce our silence about, or our refusal to pay homage to the USSR of Stalin and the China of Mao Ze Dong. Almost in the same way as in Hindu ritual practice, one cannot undertake any endeavour, or worship, without first taking the name of Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, so too, the Sta & Ma comrades cried blasphemy, when the panel discussed collaborative arrangements, the nature of health care, the generalization of democratic forms of decision making, the flexible morphology of communities - etc in a possible world beyond and after capitalism, without first singing elegies to dead mass murderers like Stalin and Mao.
I did not see this as at all necessary, as the panel was supposed to be about life after capitalism, and not about life under 'actually existing' state-capitalism. The loud denunciations of the Sta & Ma brigade were amusing, and at the most somewhat distracting, but again, what I found interesting was the fact that in the context of the WSF, where there were no captive audiences that one can fool with the romance of 'revolution' or of socialism in one country, family or generation, the lung power and eloquence of the Sta & Ma brigade found its true perspective, as just another somewhat more hoarse voice than others.
An audience of workers, students, intellectuals and activists from different parts of India, in one room with with their counterparts from South Korea, Brazil, South Africa and Europe (which is what the audience for the panel I went to looked like) has a whole world to talk about, experiences to relate, futures to imagine. For me, this was the most important thing about the WSF, in any of the panels that I went to, chanced upon, or eavespropped upon, the presence of the world was manifest in a way that I have never witnessed before in India. A small begining, but it may lead to the restoration of visions of larger, more ample and open horizons.
Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Raqs Media Collective)
