WEF Davos meet to focus on 'collaboration for intelligent age'

New Delhi: 'Collaboration for the intelligent age' would be at the core of discussions when over 100 business and government leaders from India join their global counterparts at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in January 2025. Expected to be attended by nearly 50 heads of states and governments from across the world, the annual meeting from January 20-24, 2025 would take place in the backdrop of a change of regime in the US and various geopolitical and macroeconomic issues including the Ukraine war and the continuing West Asia crisis.

Besides Union ministers and civil society leaders, the Indian presence would be comprised of top executives of business conglomerates like Reliance, Tata, Adani, Birla, Bharti, Mahindra, Godrej, Jindal, Bajaj and Vedanta groups. Besides Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, the next-generation leaders from their groups are also expected to be present, while technology leaders including Salil Parekh of Infosys, Rishad Premji of Wipro, as also Sumant Sinha of ReNew, Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm and Adar Poonawalla of Serum Institute are expected in the Swiss Alpine resort town.

Geneva-based WEF, which describes itself as an international organisation for public-private cooperation, will convene leaders from government, business and civil society as well as scientific and cultural thinkers for its 55th annual meeting under the theme of 'Collaboration for the Intelligent Age'. According to the WEF, the meeting will serve as a trusted global platform for dialogue and cooperation, bring together a diverse community of stakeholders, seek to connect the dots in an era of complexity and be firmly future-oriented -- both in terms of insights and solutions. Several sessions are expected to be attended by Indian leaders, including one on 'India's Economic Blueprint'.

As one of the world's fastest-growing major economies, India has been growing at over 8 per cent and this growth has been buoyed by a focus on promoting local innovation and startups in technology and manufacturing, representing a departure from traditional export-oriented models. The leaders would deliberate how has India capitalised on this new blueprint and to what extent can it continue to drive global growth. According to the WEF, the annual meeting will take place at a time when geo-economic fragmentation, geopolitical polarisation and divisions over values continue to impact countries and communities across the world.

At the same time, exponential innovation and deployment around whole sets of inter-connected technologies -- from AI and quantum to energy tech, biotech and health tech -- offer an unprecedented opportunity to increase productivity and hence standards of living. Reviving and reimagining growth is critical to building stronger and more resilient economies and the meeting would seek to discuss how to avoid an Age of Fragmentation and instead work together on a can-do, people-centred agenda for an Intelligent Age. The global leaders would also deliberate on how to reinvent the muscle of collaborative innovation to get out of the current low-growth, high-debt world economy and address common challenges from climate change to the ethical use of AI.