The Hindu Business Line : World Social Forum

THE size of gatherings of activists engaged in a variety of causes is getting to be more and more unwieldy. The just concluded World Social Forum (WSF) seems to have been a mammoth affair. The number of participants descending on Ghatkopar, a suburb of Mumbai, for six days of deliberations, declamations and demonstrations, as also any number of side shows featuring songs, dances and dramas, has been estimated at anywhere between 60,000 and 100,000.

One can understand rallies made up of such enormous crowds focussed on a single theme like Martin Luther King's movement for civil rights, opposition to Iraq war or the inequities of globalisation. In such contexts, the larger the numbers, the greater is the impact on the governments, the civil society and the people at large. But there is serious doubt whether any worthwhile business at all can be transacted by a swirling gargantuan assembly under bewildering medley of banners offering all manner of remedies for the world's ills.

The only sharply etched event connected with the WSF in the minds of most people is the case against a Judge of the South African High Court for alleged raping of a fellow delegate from the same country. In other respects, it remains a big shapeless blur. There is an old adage, "what is everybody's business is nobody's business." The Forum, with its cosmic canvas comprising every malady under the Sun, ended up as sound and fury signifying nothing. There was no stock-taking of the follow-up on the discussions of previous meetings, no sense of direction for the future, no concrete plan of action to emerge out of the meeting.When asked what the precise outcome of the meeting was, the sponsors got out of the embarrassment of not being able to pinpoint any by indulging in empty rhetoric. Savour the delectable circumlocution of their reply that the WSF was "an incubator giving birth to new initiatives for change in the world. The outcome is not one but hundreds of outcomes as each of the groups here has been able to plan out new actions and initiatives." There was no clue as to the exact nature and scope of those "actions and initiatives."

However, who are we to grudge the delegates their fun blasting away at globalisation, transnationals, GM food, poverty, AIDS, IMF, World Bank and all the rest of the devils if it made them feel lighter and better at the end of it? No doubt, besides providing entertainment for the people of Ghatkopar, it must have also given a welcome boost to local economy.