As China falters, India's resilience readies for Davos test

With the Chinese headwinds taking a big toll on markets globally, India's 'bright spot' status would be put to the test at the annual pow-wow of the elite of the world beginning tomorrow in this Swiss ski resort town.

More than 2,500 top leaders, including over 50 heads of state or government and CEOs of about 1,000 top MNCs, would discuss steps for "improving the state of the world" over the next five days during more than 300 sessions at the 46th WEF Annual Meeting in this snow-laden Alpine town.

From India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would be accompanied by RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and other senior government functionaries, while India Inc would be represented by more than 100 business leaders, including top CEOs like Mukesh Ambani, Cyrus Mistry, Chanda Kochhar, Anand Mahindra, Azim Premji, Rahul Bajaj and Uday Kotak.

Jaitley would participate in a session on 'India and the World' alongside renowned economist Nouriel Roubini (known as Dr Doom) among others, where the theme would be how can India be a global resource for innovation, growth and talent.

The Finance Minister would also discuss 'Asias Era of Infrastructure' in another session, while he would also be on the panel at the last official session of the summit on Saturday to discuss 'The Global Economic Outlook' along with IMF chief Christine Lagarde and British Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne.

On the other hand, Rajan would discuss 'The Growth Illusion' with top financial sector leaders in a session - the only one so far on the official WEF (World Economic Forum) agenda for him.

Among Indian business leaders, ICICI Bank chief Chanda Kochhar would discuss 'Regions in Transformation: South Asia' along with Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, ADB President Takehiko Nakao and Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh.

The global leaders attending the elite annual event would include UK's David Cameron, Canada's Justin Trudeau, Alexis Tsipras of Greece, Mauricio Macri of Argentina, Joe Biden of the US and Johann Schneider-Ammann from the host Switzerland.

The issues that are expected to dominate the discussions include rout in Chinese markets and the resultant impact on the global economy.

The discussions would also focus on the resilience of Indian economy, which the government and business leaders from the country, as also institutions like IMF and World Bank, have been projecting as the only 'bright spot' in an otherwise gloomy world economy.

The theme is 'Mastering fourth Industrial revolution' for this year's annual meeting of the Geneva-based non profit group that has been organising this Summit in Davos for more than four decades every January.

The official agenda has issues like acute challenges of geo-economics, global security, public health, education, gender parity and climate change. The key issues to be discussed also include the "new normal" global growth and falling commodity prices.