[IMC Bombay] Plans for Indymedia and World Social Forum in Mumbai?

[Vickram Crishna]

At 12:50 -0300 22/10/2003, evan wrote:
>Ok, here are my questions:
>* What is the situation with space?

The forum is being held at Mumbai's only large exhibition space, a 
converted (disused) factory in a pretty good location, 
transport-wise. Pretty much the entire thing will probably be in 
covered and walled space. Plans include 5 large halls (2-3000 people) 
and 200 smaller (50-200 people) spaces. More up-to-date info must be 
on their website - wsfindia.org, I haven't checked recently. They 
have also planned for tented accommodation, as far as I know.

>* Is the official forum going to be in just in one area or spread 
>out in the city?

One place. This city is frankly not conducive to a spread out forum - 
traffic, distances, travel and weather are not terrific.

>* Would it be possible to get space and a net connection from the 
>WSF for the indymedia center?

Don't know. It was organised at ASF in Hyderabad, so I imagine it 
ought to be available at WSF too. It ought to be detailed on the 
website.

>* During the Asian Social Forum in Hydrabad there was a proposal 
>that indymedia run the press center, can somebody give a little more 
>context about that.

?

>* In Brazil, the IMC more radical and generally against the Workers 
>Party and WSF. What is the situation in India?

?

>* What's the situation with social movements which are more radical 
>than the Social Forum? In Brazil some boycotted the WSF and didn't 
>come while others setup counter and parallel forums.

Yes, it was great fun seeing all this happen at ASF. Even some of the 
participant groups came marching around noisily disrupting other 
people's sessions. However, it wasn't all sweetness and light - one 
local dissident group came into the ASF HQ with arms and threatened 
them physically for accepting 'tainted funding'. Mumbai will probably 
not witness such novel excitement, we have quite a lot of our own.

>* What is the relationship between the Indian Communist Party, the 
>World Social Forum, and Indymedia?

WSF HQ is in an office donated by one of the main communist parties. 
As far as I know Indymedia India has no overtly political alignments, 
but I may be entirely wrong.

>* How organized is Indymedia in India and Mumbai? How many people, 
>meetings, projects, offices, computers, finances?

?

>* What are the costs and issues with getting a broadband internet 
>connection in Mumbai?

Typically under Rs 5k ($100) upfront for an always on cable (CAT5) 
connection, higher for cable modem, DSL etc etc, which of course also 
promise higher bandwidth. It may make sense to borrow a CDMA phone 
(115 kbps) if you really need broadband for the duration. Till now 
such phones are not available on rent.

>[ LANGUAGE: I assume all the emails about the WSF and India should 
>be in english? After 10 years of disuse, my Hindi is almost 
>nonexistent. I doubt anybody in India speaks much Spanish. In other 
>events such as this we have made a large effort to do multilingual 
>organizing, i don't know if we need to for Mumbai. ]

Yes, Spanish is virtually unknown here, though Portuguese (and 
dialect) is spoken here and there, in Mumbai too. Not very useful on 
the street, even less on email. Hindi in Mumbai is an experience in 
itself.

My organisation handled multilingual translation infrastructure for 
the main halls at ASF, using multi-channel wireless. The organisers 
have not shown any interest for WSF, although we have met them. and 
offered our help this time around. I hope they have sorted out their 
problems, as multiple languages are a given for WSF.

-- 
Vickram