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Mumbai puts anti-globalization stars to
the test
By Gary LaMoshi
HONG
KONG - The World Social Forum (WSF) gathered opponents
of globalization in Mumbai, India's financial capital
formerly known as Bombay. Organizers needed a pretty big
tent to fit in all of the divergent views, and they
chose an awfully odd place to pitch it.
The WSF
is intended as an anti-globalization counterpoint to the
World Economic Forum for the globalizing and skiing set
that was to open in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday,
just as the WSF was closing. While Davos hosts the
movers and shakers that run the rich world's converging
economies, the WSF aims to give voice to the plight of
those left behind.
Figuring out what that voice
ought to say, though, isn't very easy. It's far simpler
for activists to state what they're against - US
President George W Bush, multinational corporations,
poverty, pollution, discrimination - than to articulate
what they're for. For example, they're against free
trade, but in favor of what instead? Russians who've
never seen a banana and Africans who only travel by
foot?
List of enemies
The World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade
Organization (WTO) also rank among the WSF's top
targets. But one of the WSF's featured speakers was 2001
Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, former chief
economist at the World Bank (and, before that, a White
House economic adviser). Stiglitz has become an
outspoken critic of his former employer, but he supports
free trade, provided that the rich countries give a
fairer shake to developing countries.
These WSF
gatherings began in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2000, and
this meeting in Mumbai is the first held elsewhere.
Ironically, anti-globalization forces use the tools of
globalization, such as the Internet and improved
transportation and communication links, in service of
their cause. But there are limits. Revelations that the
WSF took funds from the Ford Foundation, linked to the
founding family of Ford Motor, created a scandal; this
year's WSF is certified Ford Foundation-funding-free.
There's arisen a virtual global catalogue of
anti-globalization all-stars. It includes veterans of
the system who'd like to make it work better, such as
Stiglitz and reformed World Bank adviser Jeffrey Sachs,
who admits that the economist fraternity got it wrong in
post-communist Soviet-bloc countries, along with
freelance radicals such as former US attorney general
Ramsey Clark, who can be counted on to denounce any US
action, anywhere, any time.
Gros
fromage
French anti-globalization all-star
Jose Bove was another featured speaker at Mumbai. Bove
made his name by attacking a McDonald's branch for its
bad food (while pressing for freedom to export the
Roquefort cheese he and his neighbors produce into world
markets without restrictions). A far more effective, but
less flashy, way to register protest against
unsatisfactory products in a free market is to refuse to
buy them, but that common-sense decision won't make you
a revered anti-globalization all-star.
Many of
the activist groups represented at the WSF are veterans
of the anti-WTO rallies in Cancun, Mexico, where
developing-world negotiators managed to derail talks as
demonstrators put on a series of colorful and
occasionally powerful protests. The most powerful
gesture was the suicide of a South Korean agricultural
activist. But he gave his life to protect his fellow
rich-country farmers from imports from poor countries
(see Trade gets a martyr, September 13,
2003).
That's clearly an anti-globalization
sentiment, but not one that will benefit the world's
poor. Organized labor from the developed world, which
supports the WSF, actually has interests diametrically
opposed to those of the developing world. Rich
countries' unions generally support trade barriers that
restrict imports in order to save manufacturing jobs for
their members at the expense of employment opportunities
and investment in poorer countries.
Even when
unions and anti-poverty activists agree on policy, they
have to bridge huge gaps in presumptions about outcomes.
For example, both groups support steps to improve
salaries and working conditions in the developing world,
such as a global minimum wage, or the guidelines for
labor that Amnesty International unveiled at the WSF.
Champions of poor nations see such standards as giving
their constituents a better deal, protecting their
health, wealth and human dignity. The unions of rich
countries cynically see those rules eroding the cost
advantages of poor nations, thus making it less likely
that their members' jobs will move offshore.
India rising
Aside from the
difficulties in reconciling the different constituencies
represented at the WSF, it's also difficult to reconcile
the message with the history of the host country.
For more than 40 years, India pursued policies
that, for the most part, would please anti-globalization
activists. India's government successfully barred
multinational corporations - India remains one of the
few places on Earth where consumers don't know that US
cigarette brand with the cowboy imagery - and levied
harsh duties to restrict imports. These heirs to Mahatma
Gandhi also promoted austere lifestyles and discouraged
conspicuous consumption. The state endeavored to provide
a minimal standard of living to all. Amid these
policies, India remained one of the poorest countries on
Earth.
In recent years, India has scaled back
government regulations, eased foreign-investment
restrictions, and stood by idly as consumerism has taken
hold in society. Perhaps rather than government action,
the most important transforming factor has been the
rising tide of globalization that favors India.
A pool of able software engineers and other
information-technology professionals who'll work for a
fraction of the salaries of their US or European
counterparts attracted attention of high-tech firms from
around the world. More recently, on a small scale,
cheaper global phone rates and India's English speakers
created opportunities to open call centers to answer
consumers' questions.
Indian films have gained
broader exposure and potential markets beyond
neighboring countries and Indian expatriate communities
through globalization. Greater global awareness has also
boosted overseas investment in Indian stock markets to
record highs.
This week, India's government
announced economic expansion of 8.4 percent in the
latest reported quarter, and even boasted of challenging
China as the world's fastest-growing economy, just as it
is due to overtake China as the world's most populous
nation. You can quibble about issues such as
distribution of wealth and equity in world trade
relations, but even an anti-globalization all-star has
to admit there's no better cure for poverty than rising
wealth.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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