"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he;
"But 'twas a famous victory."
– The Battle of Blenheim, by Robert Southey
A similar question may be asked after every episode of the World Social Forum. The Mumbai chapter of the global event, held for the first time outside Brazil, was no different.
However, the event was spiced-up a bit by the rape allegation by a 27-year-old South African AIDS activist against her compatriot and high court judge Sirajuddin Mohammed Ibrahim Desai.
Oh yes, and regular hoopla against globalisation, capitalism, imperialism, racism and the environment surrounded the 1,200 seminars and conferences organized in the five-day event.
There is little doubt that the WSF is a famous event, a huge event-management-effort, but at the end of the day, one has to ask what came of it all, and the answer remains unknown.
Perhaps, Kaspar summed it up best in the poem above – “It may have been a great victory, but he cannot tell what good came of it all.”
- Saurabh Azad