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HYDERABAD, Jan. 10

DURING January 2-7, Hyderabad witnessed the coming together of people who are determined to end war, domination, hunger and want. Though they advocated different ideologies, the entire gathering at the six-day Asian Social Forum (ASF) summit had one common dream — Another Asia is Possible.

Nearly 15,000 delegates representing as many as 840 organisations took the city by storm, organising hundreds of seminars, workshops, meetings and processions opposing the onslaught of imperialism. Their struggle was against neo-liberalism, globalisation and communalism.

Landless agricultural workers, small and marginal farmers, dalits, adivasis, trade union representatives, economists and all those who were at the forefront of people's movements descended on the Nizam College grounds, the main venue of the ASF summit, spreading their ideas and activities.

There were noted economists like Dr Samir Amin who wanted to "build a Southern Front to fight imperialist globalisation" and Dr Prabhat Patnaik who felt that another world was not only possible but was necessary. Prof Jean Dreze said that the struggle for basic rights to food, education and health go alongside a struggle against the present neo-liberal order.

Mr Walden Bello, the Director of Focus on the Global South, expressed that "if the production and political decisions could be locally determined then there was no reason to have them planned at a larger, national or transnational scale". He asserted that economic production should be for equity rather than the corporations' narrow definitions of efficiency, which simply focused on reducing unit cost.

Mr Bello suggested that we need to "de-globalise" and create a pluralist form of global governance in which the "centralised unaccountable" institutions like the WTO, IMF and the World Bank were either abolished or their power massively diminished such that global, national and local institutions would operate with even power across the global system.

There was Ms Nora de Cortinas of Argentina who represented the "Mothers of the Disappeared". She recounted struggles of the Latin American people who suffered more than 500 years of oppression at the hands of their colonisers. Ms Vandana Shiva of Navadanya lamented that the ordinary rights such as digging a well, retaining seeds and growing food were being taken away from women by the WTO regime.

Ms Medha Patkar and Mr Sandeep Pandey effectively used the ASF platform to raise the issues ranging from displacement of people to disinvestments in the public sector. There was Swami Agnivesh who explained how the prominent economic development models of today lack human values.

The former President, Mr K.R. Narayanan, felt that the ongoing process of globalisation was "inspired by a single power to subjugate the world". He said that it was a "mindless march" affecting the people.

A visit to the ASF summit revealed the growing opposition to globalisation from the leaders of various people's movements and the names of all of them would run into a long list.

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