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Keynote Address From A Rising Global Icon At The WEF 2018 in Snowy Davos
Narendra Modi’s visit to Davos comes twenty
years after a “humble farmer” and consensus prime minister, sitting atop a
shaky coalition and also-ran economy, merely participated, in 1997, at the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Prime Minister Modi will not only go to the
Swiss mountain-top for 2 out of the 5 day event, but will deliver the keynote
address at the plenary session on January 2 3rd 2018.
India will also host the welcome reception at
the outset of the summit, replete with Indian cuisine, music, jugglers,
acrobats, fire-eaters and yoga demonstrations.
Marking its confident presence at Davos will be
a contingent of 100 major company CEOs, 6 Union Ministers and 2 Chief Ministers
from India.
Prime Minister Modi’s star-turn at snowy Davos
will follow one by President Xi Jinping of China who did similar honours last
year. Perhaps the time has truly come to not only hyphenate these two great
powers, but contrast their meaning to the world.
Xi, in his rather ritualistic and formal way,
staked a claim to global leadership and indeed climate control too. This, in
the backdrop of a Trumpian “America
First” policy and refusal to endorse the Paris Climate Summit. This was
perceived, a little too hopefully by
some, as a retreat from America’s “globocop” avatar, not to mention its Numero
Uno positioning.
India comes to Davos 2018 with a burgeoning security
cum economic relationship with the US, Japan, Israel, Russia, Australia, Iran,
Afghanistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and several ASEAN countries- disturbed by
the goings on in the Malacca Straits, the South Chins Sea, and even the Indian
Ocean.
Sympathetic noises have also come in
recognition of India’s position from many African countries and the other bits
of BRICS of late too.
A unipolar Chinese domination in place of the US is not palatable to any country other
than perhaps a helpless Pakistan and North Korea, with even these two
satellites chafing at the bit sometimes.
Much of this is not only due to China’s
territorial insatiability and military menace, but also rapacious commercial
terms for its infrastructure building abroad. Countries that have fallen prey
to Chinese blandishments such as Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, Malaysia,
Bangladesh, Pakistan,Venezuela, are all realizing, too late, that they are all
on the brink of bankruptcy, and that China is the new owner of all that they
possess.
India, by way of contrast, is working benignly
with Iran, Afghanistan, several of the Central Asian and African republics,
Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh etc. alongside Japan sometimes, and is clearly not
seen to be predatory.
India’s
economy, though four-times smaller than China’s, is not nearly as burdened with
debt. Though China trundles on, with a debt overhang of 260% of its GDP, the
question is, for how long, before the avalanche strikes?
India in fiscal 2017, despite muted growth, by
its own standards, at under 7%, is nevertheless slated to grow again, at a
significantly faster rate than China, by 2019.
In 2018 itself, it will take the 5th
position in the economies of the world, ahead of Britain and France.
In more ways than one therefore, India is signaling
that even though it is hampered by its red- tape-loving bureaucracy and
socialist hangover, its demographic fault lines, inefficiencies, dirt, and
pervasive petty corruption, it is also taking definite strides to develop into
a modern state.
Modi is both a symbol and fact of this exciting
new trend, and exudes the determination to see it through.
The 3,000 global leaders expected this time in
Davos will witness and feel the considerable dynamism, confidence and charisma
of the world’s most famous “tea seller” made good, (as Ivanka Trump recently
put it in Hyderabad).
Modi heads The National Democratic Alliance
(NDA), that enjoys an absolute majority in the wholly-elected lower house of
parliament in the world’s most populous democracy. And this for the first time
in 30 years.
He is clearly an Indian Prime Minister that has
made an unprecedented global impact, in under four years, with many bold
foreign and domestic policy initiatives. A man of destiny, Modi has come to power at a
time that India and China not only account for a large proportion of the world’s
population, but also much of its economic growth prospects.
The situation is all the more remarkable
because India is progressing while running a vibrant, some would say, over raucous,
constitutional, universal- suffrage based democracy. And despite many
accusations of dictatorial tendencies, Modi has only flaunted his uncommon ability
to take virulent, unjustified personal abuse, without any hint of retaliation.
That the NDA runs 19 of the 29 States in the
Indian Union presently, up from just 4 when the NDA came to power in 2014, with
a prospect of adding to its tally before the end of its first term in 2019, is
clearly impressive.
But that it is also most likely to win a second
five year term of office at the Centre, in 2019, is the compelling context to
the largest Indian delegation ever to visit the WEF at Davos.
That the WEF as an organisation has been
bending over backwards to woo Narendra Modi by giving him equal billing to Xi Jinping
last year, is a recognition of present reality. This is a departure, truth be
told, from the 1971 established NGOs attitude towards him, when he was Chief
Minister of Gujarat.
So now, quite apart from the themes enumerated
for the plenary and other sessions to be addressed by Prime Minister Modi, and
indeed, other members of the Indian delegation, the influential gathering will be
keen to interact with the leading lights of this nearly pivotal democratic polity.
The Indian Prime Minister, on his part, will
return from this summit to host the entire leadership of ASEAN at India’s
Republic Day celebrations at New Delhi on January 26th . This too underlines
India’s greater outreach, relevance, and the emerging success of India’s Look
East Policy.
For:
SirfNews
(987
words)
January
9, 2018
Gautam
Mukherjee
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