Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday addressed the opening plenary at the 48th World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos in Switzerland.
PM Modi is the first Prime Minister from India to participate in a forum meeting in two decades after the then Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda in 1997. The summit will draw to a close on 26 January. He will interact with 120 members of the International Business Council, which is a part of the WEF.
Speaking mostly in Hindi, PM Modi thanked WEF and the Swiss government for the reception accorded to him.
PM Modi said, climate change and terrorism are grave concerns before the world, while asserting that terrorism is dangerous but what is equally dangerous is the “artificial distinction” made between ‘good terrorist’ and ‘bad terrorist’.
PM Modi also said India’s position on the menace of terrorism is well known and he would not like to elaborate on that.
The Prime Minister said issues of peace, security and stability have emerged as serious global challenges.
PM Modi also noted that the last time when an Indian prime minister came here in 1997, India’s GDP was a little more than USD 400 billion, but now it has increased more than six-times.
He also recalled that when Deve Gowda came here in 1997, the theme of the WEF summit was building a networked society.
That theme now looks centuries-old as the world today is about big data and so many other new developments, the prime minister said.
PM Modi said very few people in 1997 had heard of Osama bin Laden and even Harry Potter was an unheard name.
“Also, chess players did not have any big fear of the computer while Google was not there in cyber space and Amazon of that time was about dense forests. Tweeting was done by birds at that time and not by humans,” he said.
Referring to WEF’s theme of ‘Creating a shared future in a fractured world’, he said the Indian philosophy of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (the world is one family) has become more relevant in today’s time to address fissures and distances in the world.
With the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reaffirming India’s economy to grow by 7.4 per cent in the next fiscal year, India has regained the rank of the world’s fastest-growing large economy as China slows down.
Like India’s improving economic performance, the global economy was also on the uptick, estimated to have grown by 3.7 per cent last year and forecast to grow this year and the next by 3.9 per cent, according to the Fund’s World Economic Outlook Update.
Earlier on Monday, PM Modi held a bilateral meeting with Swiss President Alain Berset who greeted the prime minister with a warm handshake in this town in the Swiss Alps before leading the Indian leader to the meeting.
PM Modi, in the course of his 24-hour visit to Davos, is also scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with Sweden Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on Tuesday. (The Statesman)
