[Imc-india] local involvement in any IMC

[boud]

hi everyone, 
   i helped out with IMC India and IMC Mumbai some time ago, and i'm
still volunteering in the new-imc working group (though i would prefer
to quit and focus just on IMC Poland, in the city where i live).

ganesh wrote:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-india/2003-August/000962.html

> Please contact me on ganeshmukti at yahoo.ie to help save
> India Indymedia from fascists. I plan to lobby for
> greater editorial and technical support for India IMC
> in order to relaunch the service as a progressive news
> forum. It has fallen into disarray due to mass
> postings by extremists at a time when we need to fully
> exploit this potentially invaluable resource. The
> extremists have their sites, but apparently this is
> not enough. They want to crush their opponents and
> close down freedom of speech in our India.

IMHO it was inevitable that sooner or later fascists would
dominate the newswire of Indian IMCs, simply because internet
penetration is so low, covering mostly just the elites, and there
is no editorial policy for IMC India.

If there was less than 1% internet penetration in a rich country, it
would be just as bad...

> I have already had response from friends in the UK IMC
> who have come up with helpful suggestions and it may
> not be too long before we have a completely revised
> editorial structure. Contact me if you wish to be a
> part of this renovation of India IMC.

The general feeling in the network is that an IMC should
mainly be run by locals - people who are actually *living*
in India, in this case. Expats can be supportive, and take advantage
of better internet access to hide fascist articles, for example,
but the danger is that pro human rights expats just struggle with
fascist expats, and the people actually *living* the problems get
forgotten...

In the case of the present IMC India, it's something like a special
case which got going before the new-imc working group was created. 

Anyway, at present there's a collective in Madurai who post some
good articles and run the central column features. IMHO, they
should be contacted if an expat collective wants to help develop
an editorial policy for hiding fascist etc articles. Hopefully you
can together come to consensus...

However, IMHO, IMC India is really only a sort of default while
city-based Indymedias are being developed in India. IMHO, it might be
more effective to contact the IMC Mumbai people (imc-mumbai at
lists.indymedia.org) who were much more communicative when they got
going, though they've been fairly quiet for about half a year... 

In any case, by definition, the indymedia network is non-authoritarian.
IMHO, "global indymedia" is unlikely to try to impose any solution.

You need to contact the collectives running the two present sites,
and the best would be to also do local outreach in India, getting
open, face-to-face meetings organised there...

For hints on starting an Indymedia group "from scratch", please look up:

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/NewImcHowTo

Anyway, feel free to use the imc-india mailing list generously for
communication, and good luck in widening the collective!

> Reclaim India Indymedia! Reclaim India!

soldarity
boud