The daunting delights of Davos
By Shashi Tharoor
Weekly Column "Shashi on Sunday" in "The Times of India"
February 03, 2008

This year's World Economic Forum just concluded last Sunday in Davos, and Mumbai and Delhi are again populated with successful Swiss-returned Indian businessmen fresh from a week of global networking with their international peers and betters. The serious discussions at Davos have all been faithfully reported by the world press; but how many of us know what these good (but not plain) folks have gone through behind the scenes?

If you happen to run into a Davos returnee, have some sympathy for some of the signs of their recent travails. They are not difficult to recognise. For example, they still walk with a hunched shoulder, acquired thanks to the weight of the documents, newspapers and summaries of panel discussions and Forum sessions they missed, carried dutifully in those black 'World Economic Forum' bags that are so often seen being put through scanners at the fancier international airports. Then, there are those peculiar habits of Davos Man which they are still struggling to shed after flying away from that snow-capped wonderland. The most troublesome of these include, but are not limited to:

The furtive chest glance: The quick darting movement of the eye towards the dangling badge that sports a participant's name, which usually precedes a familiar exclamation of pleasure at meeting its wearer, whose identity you had completely forgotten until you saw his or her badge. (After Davos it usually takes attendees some time to remember that in other places it is not completely socially acceptable, when you meet someone, to look quickly at their chest first.)

The wandering eye: This is a particular Davos affliction, which affects those who, within 30 seconds of beginning to talk to you, are already looking over your shoulder to spot someone else in a crowded room who is more useful to talk to.

The insincere promise: This usually consists of promising to get together for coffee with someone you have just run into in a hallway and are not sure you will actually see again before next year's Davos, when you will make the same promise once again.

The empty visiting card holder: However many cards you bring, you are guaranteed to run out of them before the Forum runs out of receptions. The only question is when that happens: some unlucky ones are bereft by the end of the first day, others survive till the closing soiree.

Do not judge our Davos returnees too harshly if they exhibit any of these tell-tale signs. It takes time to recover from the intense dose of discussions, bilateral meetings, receptions and dinners that they have subjected themselves to for the preceding five days.

And think of what else they've endured: the caste system in Davos, for instance, which is almost as elaborate, if somewhat more explicit, than our own. Badges of various colours, bearing tell-tale designations and distinguished by the presence or absence of a shiny disk that reveals you to be of ministerial rank, announce your status more excruciatingly than a sandalwood-paste caste-mark. They reflect the various gradations of privilege governing levels of access to panels, rooms, lounges and facilities at the Forum. That's life, alas, as every Indian instinctively knows; but the one feature of Davos that has undoubtedly worsened over the years, in terms of both ubiquity and pointlessness, is security.

There were almost as many security personnel around as participants, and they specialised in the unnecessary restrictions so beloved of security people everywhere: you could not alight from a vehicle except where they said you could, you could not walk on a certain side of the street, and you had to take your jackets off and go through a metal detector every time you passed the Congress Centre, even if you didn't want to go in. Anyone walking past the Centre was obliged to make a detour to be frisked. Only security people can explain the logic of stopping a person hurrying down the street in order to oblige him to go where he doesn't need to so that you can scan his body parts for weapons he wouldn't have had a chance to use if you hadn't stopped him in the first place.

Enough complaining. Davos is really a place to meet and be met; to renew old acquaintances, to acquire new ones, and to remind the well-heeled and the well-placed of your existence. As an Indian, it felt good to be there. Indians are ubiquitous at Davos, which has for some years become a measure of the extent to which our country has "arrived" in global economic calculations. Two years ago we made a huge splash, hosting the major soiree, putting posters up everywhere hailing India as "the world's fastest-growing free market democracy", giving attendees a pashmina and a free iPod with pre-recorded desi music, and prompting the movers and shakers to move and shake their wobbly bits on the dance-floor at a "Bollywood night".

This year no such special effort was required: Indians, from ministers Chidambaram, Kamal Nath and Praful Patel to a veritable 'Who's Who' of high business honchos, were everywhere, holding forth on panels and being eagerly sought after at social events. No one seriously discusses international economics any more without mentioning India.

In the course of a few short days, you can exchange words with former (and sometimes current) presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers, not to mention the occasional Duke, and reams of journalists and columnists ostensibly on duty but networking just as fervidly themselves. Throw a dart and you're likely to strike a CEO. "As a business journalist," one reporter told me, marvelling at the availability of quoteworthy sources in every hallway, "I feel like I've gone hunting with Dick Cheney and some sidekick has just released all the pheasants in front of me so I can't miss them." That's the secret of Davos' success. No doubt about it, they'll all be back next year.