Blogging the WSF

Mumbai, Jan 16 - Yesterday, the day before WSF starts, the site didn't look like a building site, it WAS a building site. Touring the area, we stumbled on a plastics factory in the centre of the sprawling industrial estate which is housing WSF. Real industrial capitalism (with dodgy looking piles of rubbish) in the heart of WSF!

Meeting a French activist soon after registration, I found she'd been here a week assisting a Dalit star-march-type event. (Dalits are oppressed castes here in India.) Five weeks ago a Dalit conference launched a 'march' through hundreds of cities and town by four separate vans each carrying 25 Dalit activitists. They met yesterday, together for the first time since the launch, a nd they're going to feed into the programme. There are Dalit cultural  and political sections of the agenda.

The wealth of activities is staggering. Last night we were lucky to stumble on pretty much the only copy in existence of the WSF programme at the Media Centre. (The programme is being printed and bound this morning as I write, to be distributed at noon.) We found out that Hall 1, the biggest venue, which I had estimated at over 5000 chairs, can actually, officially, seat 8000 people!

Last night I also met a bunch of Nepali activists I hadn't known, confessed repeatedly that my Nepali is appalling, and got invited nevertheless to do a talk in Kathmandu next month when I go back to see my folks. I asked Anil what he thought was the point of WSF, and he said, 'Meeting people like this.' The organized events were not really important, it was the networking.

Even later, I met some US activists here organizing anti-Coca Cola events and a 'South Asian Diaspora' get-together. (They are bringing together for the first time Colombian and Indian communities affected by Coca Cola - would this have happened without the WSF?) I asked Amit what the point of WSF was (he went to Porto Allegre last year also).

He said, 'Firstly, it is hard being an activist with the daily grind and not that many victories, so it is good to get together with such a large group of activists, and to celebrate our struggling together. Secondly, we hope to really reach a lot of activists with our anti-Coca Cola events at WSF. Thirdly, you have to be very focussed, but if you are, you can get something out of the organised events. If you're not focussed, you're lost.'

Across the expressway is Mumbai Resistance, the counter-conference. It turns out that some of the speakers it had said were speaking on their platform were actually only *invited* speakers, and they've been dropped from the latest programme I've seen - including Michael Albert of Znet, who I had been looking forward to hearing both at WSF and MR.

I misreported the MR slogan. It's actually 'Debate alone cannot build another world.' True, but a lot more than debate is already happening on the WSF site. Connections of all kinds are being made. And that's the point, I guess.