An alternative food festival in Kerala to highlight the impact of genetically modified food on people's health, a cycle rally in Tamil Nadu and burning of effigies representing WTO in Rajasthan are being planned during the protest week.

For more on Devinder Sharma, Chair of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security, see:
http://www.mindfully.org/devindersharma/uk/CSGR29mar04.htm
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Indians to protest 'anti-poor' global trade system
http://www.deepikaglobal.com/ENG3_sub.asp?ccode=ENG3&newscode=98891

New Delhi, Apr 8 (UNI) Indians will join the Global Week of Action on Trade beginning on Sunday to protest an ''unjust'' world trade system that is leading to increasing inequalities.

Industrial and agricultural workers, farmers, child rights activists and health rights activists of 20 states will organise protest rallies in rural and urban centres, says organisers of the event in India.

''The people want the current global trade rules to be changed because they are unjust and unequal and affecting the poor countries,'' says Global Week of Action-India convenor J John.

The anti-trade lobby in India say they will submit a memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and send millions of postcards to President APJ Abdul Kalam to seek reversal of national policies built around the structures of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and other international financial institutions.

''The future of about 600 million Indians in the villages is linked very closely to globalisation. Our national policies are designed to drive the poor out of farming,'' says Davinder Sharma of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security.

According to Mira Shiva of the Voluntary Health Association of India, the exclusion of the poor and increasing disparities in an ''unequal'' global trade system is having a ''telling effect'' on the health of millions of poor people in the Third World.

The global trade has also adversely affected the workers in the country as they face more and more downsizing, contractualisation and casualisation of labour, says All India Trade Union Congress secretary H Mahadevan.

''The children, especially girls, suffer the most due to lack of healthcare and educational facilities in villages and even urban centres,'' points out child rights activist Eeenakshi Ganguly Thukral.

An alternative food festival in Kerala to highlight the impact of genetically modified food on people's health, a cycle rally in Tamil Nadu and burning of effigies representing WTO in Rajasthan are being planned during the protest week.

The protests will be held in as many as 70 countries, all of them in the Third World.