The CACIM Forum Fellowship process is in continuation with its efforts at promoting a critical engagement with socio-political movements in general and with the WSF process in particular. The Fellowships are a space to enable intensive, independent interaction with social and popular movements, civil organisations and networks in India and South Asia who are part of the WSF process and also with movements and organisations who have either boycotted or stayed away from the WSF and/or who take part in similar but alternative processes. We hope that the Fellowships will provide opportunities to young activists, students, and researchers to develop a substantial understanding of the Forum and also engage with and study wider socio-political processes in the country and in the world as they are emerging; and through this, to contribute to strengthening both the Forum and socio-political movement. We invite Fellows to critically examine the procedural depth, methodology, potentialities, and limitations of the Forum and of the ‘new politics’ of ‘open space’ that it professes, and also the impacts that the WSF and these politics may be having on socio-political movements and processes in the region – positive and negative.
Selected Fellows are provided with literature published on the Forum and with contacts in India and worldwide, and receive introductions to mentors / advisors both within India and from around the world for assistance in sharpening their Fellowship work. The Forum Fellowship process includes an orientation workshop and at least one interim review meeting that takes place in the course of the Fellowships, as well as a final public Workshop where the Fellows present their research findings. CACIM also undertakes to publish and publicise the research papers.
Advisors / Mentors to the Fellowship process on a purely voluntary and solidarious basis include Aditya Nigam (CSDS, Delhi), Andrej Grubacic (San Francisco), Giuseppe Caruso (London and New York), Janet Conway (Toronto and Brock University, Ontario), Naveen Chander (Delhi), Peter Waterman (The Hague), and Sonia Alvarez (University of Massachusetts – Amherst).
Our deepest thanks to them all !
We invite your critical interest in this process, including spreading the word and encouraging people to apply !