INDIA SUMMIT LOOKING BEYOND THE CRISIS

THE NEW CHAOS THEORY

The World Economic Forum India Economic Summit kicks off in Delhi today. ET takes you behind the headlines and the soundbytes, to the issues and ideas that will form the basis of the discussions; the theories, the concerns, the priorities and the innovations, so you know what to look for. Ahead of the curve.

Sudeshna Sen GENEVA

LOOKING out through the picture windows at the vast and peaceful expanse of Lake Geneva, W Lee Howell, the man who's responsible for putting together the Davos summits for years, is seeing something else. He's seeing a world which might actually want to finally listen to what his organisation has been saying for years. "We need inclusive growth globally," says Howell, senior director, Head of programming and senior advisor on Asia at the World Economic Forum. "You can't continue to live in a unipolar world where the western countries consume more than they can afford, which helps emerging markets who basically loan it back to them. We've always believed in taking a multi-stakeholder approach, and that's becoming more critical now." If WEF's raison d'être is to improve the state of the world, it's primary method to get this going is to get decision makers out of their various isolated ivory towers to sit down together and talk. Now, that has become a matter of urgency, not persuasion – WEF may not need to throw in Hollywood stars and royalty to get people to discuss world trade.
    For years, WEF's annual jamboree at Davos has been the scene of schmoozing and networking of the rich and famous of the world's economic hierarchy. It's where deals are done, and presidents and kings rub shoulders with the super-rich, and where even till last year, the après-ski parties were seen as where the real work was done, instead of attending the boring sessions about world poverty or global risk that Mr Howell organised. All that has changed. At WEF's headquarters in Geneva, there's a renewed sense of purpose. As WEF'S managing director Mark Adams jokes, "Everyone thinks that all we do is organise Davos." Now all its various teams engaged in a host of projects from global health to water security to sustainable development and identifying global risk are back in the limelight.
    Even as we speak about the fate of the world, Mr Howell's team is scurrying around putting the final touches to a completely revamped and refocused agenda for Davos 2009 – this January, instead of hosting and toasting hedge fund managers, more than 20 heads of state and 1000 business leaders will sit down and examine how to shape the post-crisis world, a record even for Davos. "Together with a carefully crafted and refocused programme, participants will have an historic opportunity to tackle the key issues facing the world at the moment," says WEF founder & executive chairman, professor Klaus Schwab."The level of interest shows the desire for us to collectively deal with the broader problems facing us all. It reflects the growing need for a multi-stakeholder and systematic view of the major economic, political, societal and technological changes that lie ahead in 2009."
    In the run up to Davos, WEF is running a series of events around the world, including a critical Global Risk Agenda meeting, where hundreds of thinkers sat down in Dubai and discussed key identified global risks. As Fiona Paua, head of WEF's strategic insight team says, the idea is to identify problems and create solutions — earlier this month 700 members of 69 Global Agenda Councils of the World Economic Forum met in Dubai to advance solutions to the most critical challenges facing humanity. Their insights and recommendations are to help catalyse solutions for the challenges faced by world leaders, and the findings and deliberations will feed into the Davos summit.
    Even as a host of Indian and foreign dignitaries and CEOs get together in New Delhi over the weekend to worry about the future of the global economic crisis and India's place in it, Mr Howell and his team of researchers, with inputs and ideas crystallised from the brainstorming in Dubai, have outlined an agenda for discussion to take the world out of where we are. Says Mr Howell, "We've got to go beyond the Washington summit. What we need is enlightened capitalism." Refreshingly, the Davos agenda doesn't mention the words credit crunch, subprime, liquidity crisis or recession. Instead, it focuses on stability, reviving growth, values and leadership principles in the post-crisis situation. As Kofi Annan, co-chair of Davos 2009 says, "The credit crunch provides an opportunity to address the broader agenda to which it is inextricably bound: effective and equitable governance arrangements for dealing with increasingly urgent economic, environmental, food security and human development issues."