BY MARGARET GLEESON, LINDA WALDRON & RAY FULCHER
NEW DELHI — The rising popular movement against corporate globalisation had caused a crisis of legitimacy for, and deep divisions within, the world's ruling elite, and now had to press its advantage by going onto the offensive, academic and activist Walden Bello told the People's Conference Against Globalisation.
Bello, the director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South and one of the leading theorists of the global anti-corporate movement, argued that this crisis was especially deep in the major institutions which have enforced pro-business, neo-liberal economic policies around the world: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation.
Particular priority therefore had to be attached to stopping any new round of trade talks being launched by the WTO's next ministerial meeting, set for November in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. He would lend his name to any campaign to prevent ministers attending, he said.
Bello also urged non-government organisations and trade unions which have engaged in the "consultative" process with the institutions of corporate globalisation to immediately withdraw.
He further called for immediate action to expose and oppose the "Global Compact" signed between UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and leading multinational companies
The 400-strong People's Conference Against Globalisation held here from March 21-23 brought together left academics, NGOs and social movement activists from all over India and signified a new phase in the development of the movement on the Indian sub-continent.
The bulk of the sessions provided a detailed analysis of the effects of corporate globalisation on Indian culture and economy, including on the state sector, agriculture, industry, finance, transport, health and education.
The conference also brought together representatives of grassroots organisations, political parties and trade unions from throughout the Asia-Pacific region, including the Democratic Socialist Party (Australia), the Saraiki National Party (Pakistan) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist).
The conference's final session unanimously agreed to establish an organising committee to maintain coordination between participants and called for regional meetings to plan further activities.
According to Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist, which was part of the conference organising committee, the conference had aimed "to bring together an Indian rainbow of the parliamentary left, social movements, progressive academics and the revolutionary left, and to build a bridge between theory and activism".
"We achieved this without duplicating existing structures", he told Green Left Weekly.