Friday, Jan 03, 2003
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By Our Special Correspondent
Leading Asian human rights activists (from left) Walden Bello, director of Focus on Global south, Abdel Jawad Saleh of the Palestine Legislative Council, Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan, economist D. Narasimha Reddy, Amarjeet Kaur, Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande, playwright, G. Haragopal, Habib Tanvir, Nora de Cortinas of Argentina, hold hands in solidarity at the opening of the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad on Thursday. — Photo: P. V. Sivakumar
The ASF attracted diverse groups representing 300 organisations that are involved in fighting for the rights of dalits and women and also NGOs, research institutions, trade unions, film-makers and cultural activists. Nizam college grounds, the venue of the forum, was full of such assorted groups coming from as far away as Argentina, Germany and Japan. Nora de Cortinas, one of the co-founders of Mothers of the May Plaza, Argentina (an organisation formed by women to protest the disappearance of their children under the military dictatorship), set the ASF's opening plenary rolling. She said she was presenting not just the voices of those who lost their sons in the struggle in Argentina but those fighting the neo-colonial capitalists and State oppression. ``We have to continue to fight, so that our children do not have to suffer from hunger and roam the streets. We have to say no to war, neo-liberalism and racism''. G. Haragopal of the University of Hyderabad and human rights activist said Hyderabad was chosen as the venue ``because Andhra Pradesh is passing through the whole process of globalisation. In a way, it has become a laboratory for World Bank-directed reforms. And we have to show that there are people who want to fight such exploitative situations and for establishing an egalitarian order''. Analysing globalisation, Prabhat Patnaik of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said it was not the much-expected productive industrial investments that flowed from the developed North to the under developed South, but one-way finances that thrived on speculative trade in stocks. No labour was allowed from South to North. It was a massive extraction of resources, leaving the vast population pauperised, dismantling the productive status of the State. The implications of such policies were disastrous. It led to a rise in unemployment, for the first time in rural areas and poverty and declining living standards. This at a time when 60 million tonnes of foodgrains were rotting in godowns and the industrial capital remained untapped. The growth in unemployment meant rise in communal violence, lumpenisation of people and fascism. A strange phenomenon was the way States were vying with each other in getting ``pushed into the lap of imperialism'', negotiating directly with the foreign funding agencies, with Andhra Pradesh being in the forefront. Alternatives were necessary in such a scenario, not only to improve the living conditions but for the survival of the society. Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan spoke of the need to broadbase the struggle to fight not just globalisation but casteism and communalism. ``We know religion as something that is tolerant and accommodative and not violent as depicted by forces of communalism. We have to target not just the MNCs but the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and other multilateral agencies and if the WTO agreement continues to be discriminatory, pressure the National Government to withdraw from it''. Abdel Jawad Saleh, a former Minister in the Palestinian Authority, said he looked forward to revival of the golden days of 1950s when India, China and Egypt led the world. Narrating the agony of the Palestinians, who were denied the right to drinking water, shelter and farming on their own land, he hoped that a new movement would take shape from the ASF, to oppose the imperialist forces. Others who spoke in the opening plenary were Nirmala Deshpande, noted Gandhian, Samir Amin, one of the best known political economists from Egypt, Amarjeet Kaur, secretary general of the All India Trade Union Council, Habib Tanvir, theatre personality and Narasimha Reddy of the University of Hyderabad.
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