(Above): File photo of Railway Minister Piyush Goyal.(Kamal Kishore/PTI)

Some of the biggest names in world politics and business, from over 91 countries, gathered around in Davos, the ski town in the alpine region of Graubunden in Switzerland, to attend the fiftieth World Economic Forum Annual Meeting being held there, January 20-24th. Priyanka Bhardwaj reports.

This year’s summit is centered on the idea of “reshaping capitalism” to fully embrace stakeholder capitalism for a more cohesive and sustainable world which translates into corporations focusing their profits and priorities not just on shareholders and stock prices but even on employees, customers, suppliers and communities, for “better capitalism”.

The summit has prioritized key areas of society, ecology, industry, geopolitics, technology and health, to push for a ‘Davos Manifesto 2020’, to reimagine the purpose and scorecards for companies and governments, and has shifted to being a completely carbon neutral summit in terms of calculation and emissions.

Leading the Indian delegation of government officials and a 100 odd Indian CEOs is Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of Commerce & Industry Minister, and of Railways, whose agenda is choc-a-bloc with meetings, discussions and participations of gatherings – bilateral meetings with global CEOs such as Judith Mckenna of Walmart, Visa Chairman Alfred F Kelly Junior and Unilever CEO Alan Jope, meet government delegates from Russia, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, the Director General of World Trade Organization, and Secretary General of Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development; roundtable discussions for accelerating investments in railways and collating global institutional investments; and, attendance of informal World Trade Organization gathering, all on the sidelines of the main WEF event.

Individual Indians attendees are Deepika Padukone Bollywood actor who received the Crystal Award for her fight against depression and mental health issues, and renowned spiritual guru, Sadhguru who is imparting morning meditation sessions to the CEOs and joined others in calling for a unified action against climate change and planting a trillion trees sequestering 200 giga tons of carbon in the next 10 years.

A significant report, Global Risks Report 2020 has delineated major environmental, ocean and climate risks as the top global risks to the economy, and summit aims in assisting governments and international institutions in tracking progress toward the Paris Agreement and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The large part of the conversations, however, hovered on the health of economy and recent cuts in global growth projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) threw fresh light on perceptions of the India story.

For 2020, forecasts for global economic growth were revised from 3.4% in October to 3.3%, and for 2021, it has been trimmed from 3.6% to 3.4%, averaging higher than 2.9% attained in 2019, the worst performance since the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist of the IMF, held India responsible for downgrade by 0.1% as she felt it “suffered from stresses in non-bank financial sector and rural income”.

India specific growth figures, according to IMF, in 2020 are expected to be around 5.8% and 6.5 percent in 2021.

Yet, the top members of India Inc. appeared unfazed with the IMF downgrades and they recommend medium and long term solutions crucial to set the ball rolling in the next few quarters.

To them the real issues center on ease of doing business, permissions and licenses, congestion of courts and judicial reforms that link with the much required for structural change and the Indian government tailoring its annual budget to boost demand despite the high inflationary conditions already prevalent.

Expressions of optimism may be derived from results of the PwC annual survey that studied over 1600 companies and 1,850 CEOs in 83 countries, including 63 from India, and in which India emerged as the fourth attractive market in the world even as China occupied the second slot despite the tensed up US-China trade relations.

However, endorsing a more cautious approach is another crucial WEF Report, one which ranks 82 countries on the social mobility index, India fared 76th and was listed among five countries, China, the United States, India, Japan and Germany — that stand to benefit from upward movements in the social mobility score.

The score indicates opportunities for attaining potential with respect to socioeconomic background of individuals in the society and which in turn impinge on the empowerment of stakeholder capitalism.

In terms of varying parameters, such as those of lifelong learning, working conditions, social protection and fair wage distribution, India stood at 41st, 53rd, 76th and 79th respectively.

And then the damning report on concentration of world wealth, where Oxfam’s “Time to Care” suggested the world’s richest 2,153 people control more money than the poorest 4.6 billion combined in 2019 while in India the richest 10% control more than 74% of national wealth, when the poor women and girls, the lowest rung of economic heap put in Rs.19trillion of unpaid care work every year.

It estimated the total wealth of 63 Indian billionaires as higher than the total Union Budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19 that stood at Rs.24, 422 billion, thereby attributing the causes to “broken economies” that are enriching the few at the cost of everyone else.

Not sharing the optimism of India story is Risk Analyst Ian Bremer who stressed on downward pressure on global economy on account of macroeconomic fragilities and financial inequality ignited by constitutional breaches, accompanied by corruption and inflationary conditions, diverting attention away from economic conditions.

But while these may be countered on misconceptions built around misinterpretations of real factors of illegal immigration, need to integrate indisputable territories and facilitating identities to minorities in neighboring Islamist countries born out of Partition of the subcontinent, the reality remains that New Delhi has to wage a renewed story of improvements – enhanced public spending, reduction in corruption (India has fallen by 2 positions to 80th in the corruption index brought out by Transparency International), and more lines as proffered by critics.

Even as the “big attack” on Modi government’s nationalist policies have come from billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who is expected to be countered adequately by New Delhi, in order to allay investor concerns, the good news from Davos is that no economic recession on a global scale is believed to be on the cards and IMF Chief Kristalina Georgeiva has described India’s slowdown to be a temporary one as fundamental of the economy is still strong.

Besides, India has joined WEF’s Reskilling Revolution as a founding member nation, to impart better education, skills and jobs to a billion people by 2030 and future-proof workers from technological change in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.