The quote from Ghandi, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win," may have become a cliché, but it seems apposite to describe Nitin Desai's about-face on the capacity of the IGF to seek consensus on policy recommendations. By the time of the taking stock session at Hyderabad, it had become clear that even Desai could not continue to resist the tide of opinion that the IGF should move beyond mere discussion to policy development. Summarising the clearly expressed views of speakers such as Alun Michael from the UK, Everton Lucero from Brazil, Parminder Singh from IT for Change and Bertrand de la Chapelle from France, he asked,

Can we design something where, at least in a few limited, well-defined areas where a process has succeeded in narrowing differences, finding consensus, we can come up with something which carries a certain legitimacy because it has come from a broader multistakeholder process in which the people who have ownership are not just governments, but governments, service providers, industry, NGOs, and many others?

Yes, it doesn't have to be done for everything. It may be done only in a few areas, like the example that [Everton Lucero] gave of child pornography. Should we be thinking in these terms?

And I get the sense that people feel that, look, it's time we started thinking about what do we get out of this process. We don't have to be a legislative process. All valuable products are not necessarily legislative products. In fact, sometimes the legislative products are of extremely limited value.

The important thing is it must be a product which the people who have responsibility for decision take seriously. And those people may well be Internet Service Providers rather than governments. They may have to take that seriously in implementing it.

So I don't think we have to think in terms of legislation in the usual sense of the term. But reflecting something which is a genuine consensus, how do we do that.

People talked in terms of net-based, net groups coming together, developing things. And I think what all this is leading to is trying to look towards a richer contributory process to the global IGF, the regional, the national IGFs, net-based coalitions developing this work, the dynamic coalitions coming up with products. And creating a space where these things will be talked about, will be discussed.

Does this signal a real shift in attitude of the IGF's most powerful individual towards the institution's role in Internet policy development? I have been involved with the IGF for long enough to have my doubts, but we will learn more at the next consultation meeting in Geneva this coming February.