By JEHANGIR POCHA - For The Journal-Constitution

Mumbai, India -- India's hosting of the World Social Forum, the new talking-shop of anti-globalization activists, was expected to generate wider interest in the "counter-gathering" to the annual World Economic Forum.

But despite attracting about 100,000 delegates from 132 countries, the six-day event became a top story in The Times of India only when one delegate was accused of raping another.

The forum, which wound up Wednesday with a march by tens of thousands of activists, was "basically a nonevent," said Abhay Chauhan, a local business executive, reflecting the general disinterest in the forum here. "India tried socialism for decades. It didn't work. There's a point where you have to move on."

The World Social Forum was conceived five years ago in Brazil, as a "pro-people" counter to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, first held more than 30 years ago. The first five forum meetings were at Porto Alegra in Brazil. Hosting it in India was an attempt to widen support.

But the concerns with globalization that are growing in the West appear to have little resonance in India.

Recent economic liberalization has turned India into one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

"There is a feel-good factor here, a new confidence that is hard to shake," said Ananda Mukerji, who heads an outsourcing firm.

At the distant suburban grounds where the forum was held, Major Somnath, a crusader for India's 120 million "untouchables," or Dalits, said one of the goals of the World Social Forum was to make Indians realize they must not buy the "feel-good feeling."

"India is shining," he said, referring to a phrase coined by the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. "But it is only shining on TV and in magazines, for those rich I.T. fellows. When you come down to Mother Earth, how does all this matter to the poor people, who are more than 60 percent of our country?"

Moli Malikah, an Israeli women's activist, said the forum provided a chance to let people know "we are not satisfied with the global system, convincing people that another way is needed."

But in most instances, it seemed to be a case of convincing the convinced. Rousing and articulate speeches by such luminaries as Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi and boisterous street plays and marches by nongovernmental organizations failed to attract more than "the usual suspects who show up for these events," admitted Nayan Bhandare, an organizer.

Some activists from the Indian Campaign to Hold Coke Accountable, who -- among other things -- accuse the soft drink maker of consuming vast amounts of public groundwater, called for a worldwide boycott of Coca-Cola. Others denounced President Bush's State of the Union address.

But critics described the World Social Forum as little more than a giant carnival for people eager to shred the current global order without offering an alternative.

"We're seeing lots of new ways to protest," Ambalal Hinge, 45, a local human rights activist, said as he watched a mock duel between Saddam Hussein and Bush. "But there's very little new policy."

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution