Several people expressed afterwards what a good meeting it was. No long-winded speeches about evident problems. The limited time was used to take a quick stock of where PGA is, generally and in Asia, to verify a common need that is felt to give a new impulsion to PGA asia and to take several concrete decisions on how we are going to do this. Short but sweet!

Now we must simply all make good on the engagements undertaken if we are to go beyond easy criticism of FSM ...

We started with very brief informal presentations about the situation on each continent and the current regional situations of PGA. We will not try to report much on this point, hoping that we will be exchanging much more effectively about all this due to the decisions (see below) taken at the meeting !

Very briefly, we should just report that there will be a regional meeting of PGA in Asia (april 2004), hosted by the Krishok federation of Bangladesh in Dhaka, to which a large number of popular organisations from all over Asia wish to come (they still need financial help for this, see below). There will be a regional meeting for Europe in Serbia in July 2004. Latin American PGA had its third regional meeting in Panama last july. The latin-american PGA convenors, CONFEUNASSC (the peasant federation of Ecuador), which is convening the Latin American Social Forum this spring, is simultaneously convening a regional PGA youth encounter. There is also a call out, from the Direct Action Network (DAN) which mobilised for Seattle, to make a new meeting of North American organisations under the PGA hallmarks. Finally, PGA people are working to organise a network in North Africa and the middle east, with a focus on the palestinian question.

Among the the actions reported was the decisive role that our friends of the indian ICC have played in blocking things in Doha and Cancun. The attitude of the Indian government regarding agriculture was vital there and they took such positions because they have to deal with constant mobilisations of ICC organisations, by tens of thousands, more or less year round. The last being a demo of 25 000 farmers squatting trains from all over the country to Delhi on the 23 of December (5 000 from Karnataka, some 1500 kilometers to the south!).

Meanwhile, in Ecuador and Bolivia, the peasant movements involved in PGA have brought down corrupt governments and are exerting a constant pressure from below. In Europe, despite the feeling that the PGA dynamic is weak now, it was pointed out that it was only the intervention of groups close to PGA that made it possible to welcome Bush and the G8 by determined blockades, rather than a purely symbolic parade. PGA, as a network whose name is generally not invoked during local or regional struggles, remains largely invisible. But quite naturally organisations recognising themselves in PGA principles are always found where struggle is going on !

This brings us to the second part of the discussion: What is the state of PGA as a worldwide network? Now that the movement and the practice of Global Days of Action, that we initiated in 1998, has grown so large and includes many other networks and calls, do we still need PGA ? If so, to do what exactly ? What is its specificity ? What are the needs of the various organisations that it could answer ?

These questions are not rhetorical.

State of PGA: Although (or even because) PGA organisations are very active on a local and regional level, PGA has been dormant for over a year on a worldwide level.

PGA has always had great difficulty maintaining communication and developing real working relations between convenors, precisely because the convenor organisations are not NGOs, but authentic grassroots organizations (in India for example operating exclusively with very few unpaid activists) engaged in huge, often critical and even desperate local struggles.

International coordination has consistently been a last, neglected point of their agenda. De facto, things have held together in large part due to the initiatives of the support group and of other people or organisations in the network. This finally created an uncomfortable situation for the support group. Some people in Europe, and in the support group itself, felt that the support group, which is made up of european volonteers, was taking too much the lead. That the process was in danger of becoming Euro-centric. Consequently, the support group stopped taking initiatives to push the process. But so far, the convenors or other southern organisations haven't taken their place. The result was, for example, that for the first time, PGA didn't issue a call for a Global Day of Action for a WTO summit - in Cancun - (although there were continental PGA calls in Asia and Latin America). Also we have had no feedback on the actions resulting from these calls, or from the Latin American regional meeting, for instance.

As said, we have been victims of our success. Global Days of Action are now fashionable. The WSF, ATTAC and all kinds of networks issued calls for Cancun. So is it still important for PGA to do so? The consensus in the meeting was to say: Yes. It is, because our calls are different: because their perspective is radical, anticapitalist and based on the strengthening of local autonomy and peoples' power in contrast with social democratic, statist or "good" world governance paradigms; and because they propose the more confrontative forms of direct action and civil disobedience.

So PGA must occupy its place and strive to be visible in the "marketplace" of antiglobalisation networks. However, there was immediate consensus to say that we should call for action on the same day as WSF, etc., whenever possible to avoid dividing the forces mobilised, which would be clearly sectarian and negative.

The idea of launching calls on other specific subjects (Arunduti Roy's proposal of taking down one multinational such as Coca Cola was mentioned) was advanced, but it was also clear that the most important subjects for the organisations (WTO or agriculture, for example) already have their days.

Concretely, the decision was taken to propose a call for a Global Day of Action for the April 17th, the Day of the farmer, with the specificity of :

a) a more radical perspective on agriculture and capitalism. As I understand it (this was not really spelled out in the meeting) there will be calls for example to reform WTO on this aspect or to take it out of WTO and give it to the UN, etc. The PGA call would go further to affirm the necessity of food sovereignty in two senses: That local communities should be able to grow as much as possible to cover their own needs, and that it is up to each country to decide what it does or does not wish to import.

Saying that "international trade has to be regulated by some organisation" implicitly admits that vital decisions must be taken by some global governance institution. Why?

A PGA call might also question the whole capitalist development paradigm, which assumes that the huge majority of the world's population must follow the western example, abandonning agriculture to seek ever rarer work in the cities, what the indian friends call "job-loss growth", etc.

b) It was also said that the call should perhaps be widened to include general ecological issues, that is a healthy agriculture as a defense of life forms on earth more generally: GMOs of course but also climate change (the latest scientific studies talk of the extinction of 25% of all living species within this century due to global warming!), the growing water crisis and even the necessity of "negative growth", particularly in the North, in order to establish a sustainable civilisation. This larger perspective would also make action from non-farmer groups more easy.

c) the call to direct action and civil disobedience. Andrej of DSM and Badrul of Krishok Federation, as convenors present at the reunion, have particular responsibility to propose a text very rapidly. The form is less important than the rapidity. April is practically tomorrow if we seriously want organisations to consider actions, but they can start making plans already!

Preparing and going beyond Global Days of Action

But it was also said that organising Global Days of Action is today no longer sufficient in itself. In 1998 people were thrilled and empowered to hear that coordinated actions had taken place in 65 different places around the world. Today, everybody knows that "resistance is as transnational as capital", everyone knows that WTO, WB, etc. are corrupt and hated world round. So PGA as a network must take another step:

We must become capable of exchanging more than just the news that we have done a demonstration! We must exchange our experiences, problems, forms of struggle being tried, perspectives of resistance and social organisation. This circulation of ideas is essential (as were the ideas of non-violent direct action against WTO brought to the West by the KRRS, or Reclaim the Streets' idea of Street Parties). But we must go much further. So far PGA has been an almost exclusively oral culture and exchanges mostly during very unprepared conferences. This method is too wasteful and too slow.

The proposal is to create a PGA electronic Journal on the PGA webpage. Different organisations from around the world must send articles concerning their situation so that different movements can compare and learn from each other, and really feel that they are in the same movement of resistance, struggling for the same things. For example, the village and traditional community based organisations of Karnataka and Bolivia have much in common, much to share. And alternative groups in developped urban areas are also trying to develop practices of local autonomy. We must be capable of sharing all this! That will put life into the still very bare, abstract structure of PGA.

Since we decided to make a call for action on agriculture April 17th, the first "issue" of this electronic journal must be centered around the question of agriculture. The Asian PGA meeting, also in April, will also be well prepared if a certain number of texts concerning agriculture can be shared in advance. The texts don't have to be long or original. Most of your organisations must have relevant texts already. If you can just send them (in english or spanish) rapidly, the support group can take care of the rest.

Please follow up on these decisions! The future of PGA as a worldwide network depends on one absolute necessity: southern organizations (convenors but not only convenors) must find some time to contribute to the process !!! If you really want a radical network to exist, you must do the footwork !

Asian Regional Conference

Time (30 minutes!) was too short to go into detail. Basically, the Asian convenors explained the (mostly financial) reasons for the long delay in organising the conference. The good news is that we have accumulated about 4/5 of the necessary amount, so a call for a conference in Dhaka could be circulated in Mumbai.

However there remain to be found at least 4 ou 5 thousand dollars. Complete applications for foundations, etc., have already been drawn up, so if anybody can propose other possible sources (for instance in North America or Europe), they only have to inform someone of the support group (Peter Custer or Jon in particular) and they will submit the application for the Krishok Federation. Please try to ask around to find sources!

It was also suggested that northern participants who can do so could try to sponsor a second ticket for an asian delegate. (I think that everyone is aware that the northerners in PGA are not rich, often working very little for money and spending most of their time in activism. However, if they can mobilise their local groups, paying a ticket or part of a ticket is not so difficult.)

In view of the still short ressources, the idea was aired that it might be necessary for the meeting, now planned for a week, to be shorter. However, it was also pointed out that the cost of prolonging the conference is certainly very small compared to the cost of transportation to Bangladesh. Conferences are always too short to be able to really develop the discussions, especially for us who wish to conduct them in a democratic and respectful way. It is almost wasteful to move so many people (and pollute the stratosphere) for only a few days.

The decision will finally depend on the state of the final budget. Hopefully, Krishok will be able to get free food from its members and a free place to stay and work, since this can be very simple.

The convenors did not have time to talk concerning the program, apart from insisting on the importance of a specific program of two days on gender and the struggle against patriarchy.

(The call for the conference, which is on the PGA webpage www.agp.org specifies that organisations should if possible send two people, at least one of whom should be a woman.)

Thanks to all for a warm and productive meeting!

Olivier and Andrej

P.S. After Bombay, I (Olivier) went to Bangalore to see Professor Nanjundaswamy, who is, as you all know, very ill, but struggling as always. Although he has great difficulty breathing and talking, he found the strength to very definitely approve the idea of a Global Call for Action on food sovereignty and the protection of small farming, but also in particular the priority of extending it to the struggle to defend "all forms of life".

All of us are sending him our best hopes and thoughts for his recovery.

Another proposition to strengthen PGA was hardly brought up in the meeting, but we would like to mention it as it came up spontaneously when I visited the KRRS in Karnataka afterwards.

In reality, a great deal of international communication and mutual support has been a result of spontaneous informal contacts created by individuals of the PGA network travelling and staying with other organisations in Bolivia, Ecuador, Central America, Argentina, etc. The idea would be to encourage this sort of longer term contacts. Their advantage is that they can go much deeper than conferences or caravans. The problem now is that generally only people from the North can afford to do this and that leaders of organisations don't have the time to make long visits. So the idea would be to encourage this process, and also for younger activists of southern organisations participate in this sort of exchange. In Karnataka, they also had the idea that it was necessary to educate the organisation much more widely, at the base, concerning globalisation, etc. The problem is that the activists must generally first learn english. So their request is for activists who know english who could come and teach english (using texts on globalisation as english textbooks) for one or two months at a time in a rural setting, close to the activists homes. Anybody interested, contact Olivier. This is a fantastic opportunity to really get to know one of the world's most remarkable movements at the grass-roots.