While leaders of BRICS nations prepare to deliberate issues of national importance with regards to policies and decision making, another group of people belonging to grassroots level communities of the member nations gathered to discuss issues that may not get relevance at the main summit.
PANAJI
Under the banner of ‘Building solidarity among communities’ representatives of NGOs and activist groups from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa met and deliberated on the first day of the People’s Forum on BRICS.
From privatizing the field of agriculture to the economics of projects implemented by the BRICS nations as well as nuclear energy and the common people’s issues, hundreds of people gathered at Xavier Centre of Historical Research to deliberate and share struggles and social experiments from other countries.
Speaking on the issue of food sovereignty and nutritional and agrarian crisis, Indian activists including Vijay Jawandhia, farmer activist and policy analyst pointed to differences in the agricultural scenario in India and Brazil. “Every few years, there is a considerable increase with the implementation of the Pay Commission owing to inflation. But with every increase, there is no subsequent increase in the minimum wage. How and why will that sector not resort to suicide? The system is only out to exploit the masses when initially the system was meant to be part of the nationalization of land for agriculture. But what is happening today is mass corporatization,” he said.
Representative from Brazil, Simone shared experiences from her country that suffered similar perils.
“We belong to the group that was out to save the land of rural people including farmers from being sold to companies. Hunger was a consequence of this, but hunger is only a creation of bad capitalist policies. Leaders are not interested in what hunger is but are focused on corporatization and creating industries,” she said.
Dr Ana Maria Suarez Franco, permanent representative at FIAN International Geneva speaking via Skype acknowledged these problems,
suggesting ways it could be addressed.
“What needs to be done is create a change in the current dominance model to one where the current functioning is also taken into consideration. One of the key issues is to include human participation. BRICS states should encourage a system where there is no human rights violations,” she said.
