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WORLD SOCIAL FORUM 2005 The World Social Forum 2004, Mumbai saw an unprecedented participation by various cultural practitioners, integrating questions of culture, art and politics into the debate on globalisation. An expansion and deepening of this discussion will be a vital part of the World Social Forum 2005 to be held at Porto Alegre , Brazil . Culture is a powerful ground on which politics is continuously transformed. It is an important form of social and political intervention, a sensibility and a means to inform future research and public policy on development. This has been reiterated and confirmed through many historical upheavals. Globalisation @ Hunger As the media globalizes and repackages itself into a product, the question of the daily existence of millions of people is edged out: hunger and starvation which are a huge cost and fallout of globalisation and as treacherous a killing machine as war rarely get media attention. 800 million human beings in the world are undernourished Some 334 million live in extreme poverty-a number which is expected to increase to 471 million over the next five years. It is estimated that 320 million people in India are facing starvation. While government godowns overflow with food grains, the government of India exports phenomenal amounts of food grains, and the import figures for agricultural products have quadrupled from 1995 to 2001. The surplus food grain in the government godowns denotes, not abundance but the loss of the buying power of the masses. Food grains being exported are priced lower than the below-poverty-line (BPL) rate and the rate at which it is sold to drought affected areas ! As debts rise from high seed prices, chemical fertilizers and competition from corporate agriculture, farmers are pushed to suicide. No matter what the papers say, this is hardly a glowing picture of a thriving economy. These disturbing facts and figures are the end product of far more insidious and inexorable government decisions and economic treaties, so that policies are increasingly anti-poor - like land reform laws to facilitate corporate agriculture, lifting of Quantitative Restrictions, cutting back on public expenditure in areas of health, dismantling of systems that gave access to the domestic markets to the Indian farmers. The cutting down of Quantitative Restrictions have led to the dramatic rise in the import figures. The WTO dangled the carrot of a level playing field and for removing northern subsidies, to the third world. Subsidies in the US and Europe have however increased after the WTO came into force and artificially cheap agricultural products are regularly dumped in our markets- making the survival of Indian farmers impossible. Indian food sovereignty and food system are completely undermined and eroded for the profit of the MNC-s rather than serving peasants or the poor, or alleviating poverty. The creation of an endemic state of hunger is the rest of the iceberg. The exposition Globalisation@Hunger was inspired by the essay ‘ Republic of Hunger by the noted economist Utsa Patnaik. The exhibition was curated by Tushar Joag and artists were invited to react to this crisis. Guwahati( Assam ) based film makers Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya traveled with Manoranjan Chitrakar (Mednapore, West Bengal ) a traditional ‘pat' (scroll) painter to Bolangir and Kalahandi in Orissa. Sonal and Mriganka produced a single chanel video titled L.O.H. (Line of Hunger). Manoranjan (Manu) produced three pat- paintings based on three different stories narrated to them by the villagers. The extremely elaborate pats talk of starvation deaths, and the scheming agents who take the farmers to cities to work as daily wages labourers on construction sites or brick kilns. The Scrolls were exhibited along with songs elucidating the stories in the Pat-tradition. Surabhi Sharma , from Bangalore (Karnataka) chose to make a film with images of a river frothing with chemical foam, fields turned saline with polluted waters, farmers dwarfed by highways and construction sites eating into them, wells made useless without water. This was a collaborative project with Sureshkumar Gopalareddy a sculptor also from Bangalore . Agricultural Economist T.N.Prakash provided theoretical inputs. Sureshkumar comes from a family of farming background who due to repeated crop failure have taken up weaving as their profession. Suresh made a montage of the images with the stills from Surabhi's film and printed it on flex. This was given a lining of silk woven on the family looms. The flex and silk medium was installed like a funnel with a monitor showing Surabhi's film at the narrow end echoing the printed images. Arunkumar H.G. from Delhi also comes from a family of farming background. Arunkumar made an installation of white and gold china crockery with decals of toiling farmers and outstretched hands, and a table cloth to match. The contrast of the fine dinner service which talks of excess in one strata and the deprivation in the other makes a succinct statement. Jivya Mashe (Dahanu, Maharashtra) a Warli painter partly subsists on the crop he grows and his diptych ‘Unhalyacha Chitra' (Painting of the Summer) and ‘Pavsalyacha Chitra' (Painting of Monsoon) shows the people of his community leaving for the city in search of alternative means to earn their living as the streams and rivers run dry in summer and agriculture is unfeasible. The noted poet and former legislator N.D. Mahanor (Jalgaon, Maharashtra ) is a farmer by occupation and has a close understanding of the predicament. Apart from doing pioneering work in the field of horticulture he has written extensively and his poetry is suffused with farmer's woes. Four of his poems were chosen and painted on banners Riyaz Komu ,(Mumbai), created a mixed media installation. Ravi Agarwal ( Delhi ) made photographic panels that depict everyday encounters with 'food' and the human condition encompassing 'hunger.' ------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: ‘Meal' Size: Variable Medium: Ceramic objects, Digital print on flex ------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: ‘Hunger Denied' Size: 3panels, 33inches X 45inches each. Medium: Digital prints, photographs and text on paper. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: ‘Unhalya Cha Chitra' (Summer Painting) ‘Pavsalyacha Chitra' ( Monsoon Painting) Size: (Dyptich) 3ft X 5ft each Medium: Powder colours on cloth -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: ‘ Private Village ' Size: 60inchesX 84inches Medium: Burnt Wood and photograph ------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: ‘Harvest (Next Season)' Size: 11 ft X 4ft X 6ft Medium: Digital print on flex, silk, single channel video (Duration: 12 minutes) -----------------------------------------------------------
Title: ‘Orissa Anahare Mritu', plot -1 (Starvation Deaths in Orissa, plot-1) Title: ‘Orissa Anahare Mritu', plot -2 (Starvation Deaths in Orissa, plot-2) Title: ‘Orissa Anahare Mritu', plot -3 (Starvation Deaths in Orissa, plot-3) Size: 22inches X 96inches each Medium: Vegetable dyes on paper --------------------------------------------------------------- fore ground: Sureshkumar Gopalareddy and Surabhi Sharma (collaborative work) ---------------------------------------------
N.D. Mahanor Palkhi cha Abhanga (devotional song)
N.D. Mahanor ‘Nangrun Padleli Jamin Sarvatra Nustach Shukshukat' (In the desert of the tilled land, not a soul in sight)
N.D. Mahanor ‘Pani Pani Pani Aani Pani Pani Pani' ( Water Water Water)
N.D.Mahanor ‘Pika Karapala' (Scorched lies the crop) -----------------------------------------------------------------
Extracts from the essay Republic of Hunger ------------------------------------------------------------------
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Arunkumar H.G 
Ravi Agarwal
Jivya Mashe 
Riyaz Komu
Sureshkumar Gopalareddy and Surabhi Sharma (collaborative work)
Manoranjan Chitrakar 
Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya (collaborative Work) Title: L. O.H (line of hunger) Duration: 9minutes, 46 seconds Medium: Single channel video 
Utsa Patnaik