What Davos Should Be
The Raisina Dialogues in Delhi set a higher standard.
There’s been a Raisina Dialogue in Delhi every March since 2016. It’s the brainchild of Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Narendra Modi’s long-serving foreign minister. Like other global gatherings, it brings together political leaders, senior military commanders, prominent business people, leading journalists, and think tank chiefs to discuss key issues; but it’s better than Davos because it’s not so dominated by politically correct plutocrats; and better than the longer-running Chinese Boao Forum, because it not essentially an exercise in homage to the host government.
I started attending virtually, during the pandemic, and have been there in person since 2022.
Because it’s India, there’s a lot of emphasis on the “global south”; but equally, because it’s India, there’s a recognition that fine sentiment shouldn’t be taken too seriously, especially if it’s masking grievance and rent-seeking; and that, in the end, noble aspirations have to take into account hard power and economic strength.
To his credit, Jaishankar invariably attends numerous sessions, sometimes simply sitting in the audience, sometimes as a key note speaker, and sometimes as one of up to a half-dozen discussants on any particular topic; politely agreeing or taking issue with his fellow panelists, as the debate goes. Remarkably for someone of such accomplishment (successively India’s ambassador to China, the United States, and head of the Ministry of External Affairs, before becoming the Foreign Minister) Jai doesn’t talk down, and is on “receive” far more often than “transmit”.
Indeed, at this conference, rank has no privileges; it might get you onto the stage as a speaker or panelist, but it’s the quality of the contribution that counts. After all, no one has a monopoly on knowledge or wisdom and everyone should be there to justify ideas and to learn from the discussion.
At every dialogue so far, Prime Minister Modi has set the example, attending the opening session, to hear the principal guest – last year the Prime Minister of New Zealand; this year the President of Finland – but not speaking himself. After the US and Chinese presidents, he’s probably the most immediately powerful person in the world, yet he’s not too proud to listen as well as to lead. Despite over a decade in office, perhaps because of his youth as a kind of Hindu monk, Modi has thusfar managed to resist the hubris of power.
And as for this notion that India, under the BJP, has somehow become an authoritarian state — that’s total BS. No country with free and fair elections, a riotously free media, and a robustly independent judiciary is in serious danger of dictatorship. And no dictatorship would host a global conference where nothing is off-limits and no one is shouted down. This year’s dialogue, after all, heard from both the Israeli foreign minister (virtually) and the Iranian deputy foreign minister.
