Wef Meet Sans Smadja On Dec 2

The India Economic Summit 2001, to be jointly organised by the World Economic Forum and the Confederation of Indian Industry on December 2, is likely to cause less heartburns this time than previous summits in the capital's corridors of power.

Claude Smadja, the WEF managing director and a regular at these summits, is not coming for the three-day event. His frank assessment of the state of the Indian economy and and the no-holds barred dissection of the government's efforts seldom went down well with the government.

Explaining the reason for Smadja's absence, WEF director Colette Mathur said that Smadja resigned from the WEF nine months ago, though he continues to serve as the pricipal advisor to the forum till the end of this year. "As Smadja wants to devote more time to his own business, he would not be attending the meeting," she said. Samdja's decision to opt out of the summit has to be a recent one as the programme circuilated earlier in the week did have his name in the list of participants.

In fact, he was slated to address a session on 'The Key Trends Shaping the Global Economy and Their Impact on India.'

With Smadja not around in this summit, there is no presentation on the state of the economy. "Various issues related to the state of the economy will come up in various sessions," CII president Sanjiv Goenka told Business Standard.

The last summit had generated a fair bit of acrimony with union finance minister Yashwant Singh not taking kindly to remarks made by another WEF regular and the Bajaj Auto chairman, Rahul Bajaj. A few days later, speaking at the annual general meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Sinha had admonished Indian businessmen for crying and cringing in front of "white foreigners."

Unlike the previous year, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will not inaugurate the summit. On Sunday, Vajpayee is going to Hyderabad to inaugurate the Indian School of Business. In his absence, Sinha will inaugurate the summit.

Also, a session on the Indian film industry at the summit, slated for December 3, has been called off. Titled 'Planet Bollywood: Are Indian Films Exportable', its participants included Amitabh Bachchan, Shyam Benegal, Shabana Azmi, Aamir Khan and Naseeruddin Shah. According to WEF spokesperson Claudia Gonzalez: "We keep on changing the schedule as per the requirement.