When the heads of state meet at BRICS, there will be dialogue and more on the collective business of running a nation, with deals and more being struck, but down at the grassroots, things are different. This is where the People’s Forum comes in. Here the matters are not of ‘national importance’, there are no major policy changes debate or made. Here, people will talk about matters that directly affect the people.
At the People’s Forum on BRICS, held at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, NGOs, activists and other representative groups are coming together to work at the grassroots level, hoping to help their fellow representatives from different countries find solutions to the problems they are currently facing, no matter what they are.
This is necessary too, because it’s imperative that we understand, for instance, how they deal with problems in agriculture in Brazil or South Africa, how land issues and appropriation of property is handled elsewhere. Most nations today suffer from similar problems. There is a widening gap between the haves and have nots, and human rights violations are common. So it’s a good thing that the common men and women meet too.
