India Social Forum

The India Social Forum grew out of the World Social Forum, an annual meeting held by members of the anti-globalisationmovement to coordinate world campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies, and inform each other about movements from around the world and their issues. Both meeting have a rotating location and the ISF was held in Delhi this year, after being hosted in Mumbai last year. The next World Social Forum meeting is set in Nairobi, Kenya at the end of Jan 2007.
Attended by approximately ten thousand people from around India, this five day event had a program packed with presentations, events, and performances covering a range of social-political-cultural areas. Some examples were Dalit (lower caste) rights, women's empowerment, children's access to food and education, and water rights, to name a few.
Many of the talks were in Hindi or another Indian language, but one of the talks that was well-translated was a series of reports given by women from around India. The topic was globalization and women's empowerment. One woman from the mineral-rich Menali region reported about the current trend to use child labor-- particularly young girls--- to mine iron ore. The current demand for iron ore comes from China, where construction of stadiums for the Olympic games is taking place. Families that lack money and resources often send girls to work before boy children. In response to concerns about education, portable schools are set up near mining sites but these schools are poorly staff, under-funded, and irregularly attended. Far more resources are put into the transporting the iron ore out of the mining sites by helicopter.
Another story came from Karnataka state, on the central-west coast of India. Many of the villages in this coastal region are somewhat isolated because of the geography of the region. The so-called "back waters" are areas reached by taking boats through the complex, winding, waterways of the canal system. These villages practice subsistence faming and have been relatively self-sufficient until recently, upon the introduction of liquor. Liquor stores wreak havoc on the villagers, by creating a drain of the local economy and a dependence on this addictive poison. When women have organized to prevent liquor stores from coming the community, they are wounded and killed by the local police, who have been paid off by liquor companies to allow building the stores.
Another story was about micro-credit programs provided to women in Tamil Nadu, the south-eastern state of India. There has been a lot of discussion of the potential of micro-credit programs in India lately, which are programs that provide small loans to village women for entrepreneurial purposes. In Tamil Nadu, this money used to be taken only by women who had projects that would benefit by having investment money. Now, men can take loans and the burden on the family is greater due to repayment problems. Further, the loans obtained by women for projects are often instead by taken the men.

Forum for the Powerless
December, 2007
Delhi, India

This conference was hosted by Tehelka, an Indian socialist publication. Here are a few notes on the topics of farmer suicides:

Currently, there is an agrarian crisis in India. The highest rate of suicide is in the most industrialized agricultural areas (e.g. Punja and Maharashtra).

An 8-member panel discussed some of the causes for farmer suicides:

·The rising cost of inputs and decreasing market price
Due to subsidized imports (from the US) and market consolidation (a few huge buyers), farmers have little choice about who to sell to and when to sell. This means that they are unable to repay the loans they've taken out to purchase high-cost inputs like GMO seeds, fertilizers, and equipment. Farmers are pressured to buy these inputs and then are humiliated by money lenders when they are unable to repay them.
·More crop failures due to pests and drought and no crop insurance
·India has decreased overall investment in agriculture and support over the last 20 years

The panel referred to US subsidies as impossible to compete with. The US model of subsidies was suggested as a solution to India, failing to note that following this model will promote industrialized agriculture. One scientist on the panel spoke on the importance of converting agriculture to ecological principles.

One of the panel speakers was a Pepsi Company representative who was there to tout their contract farming programs in Punjab, an agricultural area with some of the highest cancer rates in the country.