In a world where a vast majority of the masses are beset by rising inflation and at a time when war and commodity shocks have muddied the waters, a tiny corner of the beautiful country of Switzerland is welcoming back around 2500 members of the global business and political elite in person for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is taking place here from May 22-26 in sunny Davos, the Alpine resort municipal town in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. The President of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Daniele Giovanni Cassis, a physician and politician who took over at the beginning of this year, will open the conference along with WEF founder Klaus Schwab.
This is a conference with a difference. It takes place in spring, at a time when the pandemic and its impact remains in the air, even though masks are a rarity on the street outside the venue. Unlike past annual events held in January when the snow made it a winter wonderland, Davos is blooming in spring time. The drive from Zurich airport is a visual delight for visitors, with lush meadows and flowers, waterfalls and lakes driving home the natural beauty of this country.
However, this has proven to be a headache for the police and military forces entrusted with the security of the participants. There is no snow on the streets, the fields are lush and green and the valleys surrounding Davos at this time of the year tempt you to abandon everything and go take a hike! The municipality of Davos covers nearly all of the valley of the Landwasser river with two adjacent villages of Davos Dorf and Davos Platz being the centre of all activity for an estimated population of less than 11,000 people.
During winter, the snow used to naturally help control access and provide some ‘natural’ security for the influx of WEF participants. This year, the organisers have had to spend more money to enhance security including setting up ugly steel barriers to fence off the roads leading to the conference venue. The powerful are having to change their routines as well – the helipad used by them to reach the venue had to be shifted as the ground is too soft in spring!
It is perhaps only appropriate then that Indian spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is also scheduled to be here at the conference to appeal to the global business leadership “to become active participants in re-writing the economic and ecological destiny of our planet”. Hopefully, his message that “only if the planet thrives can businesses thrive” will resonate well at a time, when global industry is navigating a complex transition where a three-decade-old order of doing business is changing rapidly.
From India, which has over a million active companies, around five dozen business leaders are scheduled to be in attendance. The government delegation is being led by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and would include union petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri, health minister Mansukhlal Mandaviya and several state chief ministers and their officials among others.
Over the next few days, the hot topics that will figure on-stage and off it as well, is the emerging multipolar world, where the world trade order is under question due to the pandemic and Russia’s highly unpopular, and by all accounts doomed, invasion of Ukraine.
All participants have had to be boosted and fully tested for the virus before arrival, spot tests and self-testing antigen kits are also being handed out to ensure that the conference remains safe. But, it is not the virus that is on top of the agenda this year. It is Ukraine that is the main topic of the conference this year, with its telegenic President Volodymyr Zelensky set to address the participants virtually.
And as his words resonate across the conference, the discussions centred on this year’s theme of “History at a Turning Point: Government Policies and Business Strategies” should provide some answers to the burning questions of an era where brutal, unrelenting, painful and unwanted (for many) change is truly the only constant.