Follow TNM’s WhatsApp channel for news updates and story links.
“What’s the point of Davos” and “Davos is dead / out of touch / irrelevant” are sentiments typically taken out and aired when the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual summit of the global elite rolls around each January.
These arguments are not without merit, starting with how a gathering of the wealthy and powerful in a Swiss ski resort could live up to the WEF’s lofty motto of “committed to improving the world”. In his interaction with the editor of The Economist, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said as much when he told the gathering of “intellectual elite”, “You didn’t do a particularly good job of making the world a better place.”
Still, this year, with Donald Trump headlining the event and not holding back on anything, from his determination to appropriate Greenland to tearing into Europe to brandishing his weapon of choice i.e. tariffs, those existential questions about Davos were heard less frequently.
Back here in India, however, we, the less elite, had to contend with another question, in a similar vein. With India’s current ambitions on the global stage, economic and geopolitical, it is not entirely surprising that the country sent its largest delegation to date to mark our presence at the 2026 edition of WEF. But what’s the point of Davos, if our elected representatives seem to be going all the way there only to hobnob and sign deals with other Indians?
If one wanted to be particularly generous, you could argue that there is comfort and warmth in seeking out the familiar and perhaps that’s what was playing in the minds of our ministers in the rarified and literally freezing environs of the Swiss town, dubbed the playground of the rich. But as large-minded as one may want to be, that still does not seem to justify what was playing out, going by the social media feeds of various state government representatives at Davos, from Maharashtra to Karnataka.