IMC India - WSF and MR: Let us unite!

WSF and MR: Let us unite!
By Vidyadhar Gadgil 19/01/2004 At 07:02

Foreign funders (and this includes their dark-skinned Indian employees), your work was over long ago. If you cannot learn how to behave with discetion and sensitivity, go for a holiday in Chiang Mai or Florida till the 22nd. That is the biggest contribution you could make to the unity of the movement.

WSF and MR: Let us unite!

By Vidyadhar Gadgil

WSF and Mumbai Resistance are all about inclusion and diverse voices or they have no meaning. That is the politics of the present moment. Inclusion is what both should and do aim for. But friends are sitting across the road from each other today. There are many issues which both groups must address, and unity may not happen for now. But we should try. How nice it would be to have a united rally! As Arundhati Roy says, let us unite. Let us have a united march on the US embassy, organised by Mumbai Resistance tomorrow, and a joint rally organised by the WSF on 21st. We are friends.

There has been much criticism of MR, saying that they are Stalins and Maos. And what is the alternative WSF is offering? Well, to watch ActionAid in action, they are offering Winston Churchill. Give me an ethnic Indian Mao or Stalin any time, if the alternative is an ethnic Indian Winston Churchill.

And that is one of the glaring faults of WSF 2004. Development yuppies and bureaucrats from the Third World employed by foreign funding agencies are now dictating development agendas. They always have, to some extent, but now (and particularly in WSF), they have become mannerless and politically insensitive about it. Now they do not restrict themselves to providing support, they actually have the cheek to take publicly visible political stands.

Not all of them. The clear winner in these stakes (no contest whatsoever) is ActionAid. Oxfam leans towards this approach, but has managed to retain a vestige of sanity and political sensitivity. The rest are behaving well enough. After signing their cheques -- or not, as the case may be, after all that is their prerogative as it's their money -- they are no longer visible. Their staff who are around were spotted discreetly moving around both WSF and MR, meeting friends, and enjoying the mela and the high, as all of us are.

Talk to the new breed of development yuppies from ActionAid Asia. They feed us bullshit about the need for them to be proactive. They criticise the CPI and CPM who are being so nice and discreet. They are criticising the politics of MR -- talk about teaching your great-grandfather to suck eggs. They say Arundhati Roy is shallow. Maybe they are right about all this, but everybody except them seems to understand the need for unity. Maybe MR and WSF can still find common ground. It exists, but all must have maturity and sensitivity to start moving towards it. Foreign funding agencies can best contribute by becoming invisible, or at least discreet and well-mannered.

The individuals working there are welcome to be proactive by all means.But first, please resign your jobs and your perquisites and fancy salaries and secretaries and whatnot and come down to earth. Some of you are okay. We respect your work. We read your works with admiration. But please, Mr. Harsh Mander, do not put ActionAid's name on the exhibition. Despite being terribly concerned about Gujarat, I have felt too ashamed to go in and look at our problems, with the signature of Winston Churchill visible at the bottom. Aren't the people suffering enough due to the foreign origins of the only feasible political alternative to the Hindu right in India? That at least is not her fault, it is an accident of birth. But your brash behaviour is a sign of your immaturity.

And please refrain from announcements over the public announcement system along the lines of "ActionAid Chhatisgarh invites you to the workshop on Water Policy in Hall D-20." Discussing issues of political economy is the job of the movement. Sometimes it is reluctantly forced to take cheques from the West. But the issues and decisions must always be those of the movement. All you foreign funders, you have done your job when you signed the cheques. Now pack up the cicus at the back of Hall B.

Foreign funders (and this includes their dark-skinned Indian employees), your work was over long ago. If you cannot learn how to behave with discetion and sensitivity, go for a holiday in Chiang Mai or Florida till the 22nd. That is the biggest contribution you could make to unity.

Email:: vidyadharg@lycos.com

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NGO Suits

Ganesh 19/01/2004 08:29

I often cannot tell the difference between the NGO suits and their corporate allies. It is hard to communicate with Western NGOs, such as Oxfam, when what you are saying counters their doctrines. Oxfam's new-found belief in free trade beggars belief and certainly does not match the feeling of Southern, grass-roots NGOs. Perhaps they think their American degrees give them the right to dictate the development agenda. Let's face it, these global NGOs are not grass-roots organisations - you can't actually become a member of Oxfam and Oxfam is not accountable to anyone but the authorities.

These NGOs are essentially private sector firms with a charity status, supported by the international establishment to displace the functions of democratically elected (albeit, often corrupt) local authorities. Public services are gradually being privatised, with responsibility passing to the corporate NGO sector - which sets up micro-credit schemes to push debt onto poor households. International NGOs run projects which are time-limited, with their success determined by the amount of boxes they can tick. No accountability, no democracy, no grass-roots input - just a few white men in Tata Sumos getting photographed with panchayat strong-men.

This World Social Forum is dominated by the international NGOs and their friends - Mary Robinson, etc. From what I have seen (and I can only talk from my viewpoint in Kolkata, many miles from Mumbai), it is a forum where Westerners lecture and their Southern lackies nod and dance for them. I welcome the Mumbai Resistance, although I do not consider myself Maoist or a member of any other clique.

I would also like to question why the WSF is in Mumbai in the first place. Why the most expensive city, where I gather it costs Rs500 per person per night to stay in a dormitory bed? Is it because the NGO suits can't bear to be anywhere where there is a scarcity of capuccino, continental cuisine and a/c rooms? How are grass-roots activists coping with the high accommodation fees? The WSF is a farce and should be ignored.