Something curious happened this January. Davos lost its alter ego. The World Economic Forum began in the Swiss Alps at the appointed hour, but there was no counter-narrative in the plains below. The World Social Forum did not convene in one place, Porto Alegre, Mumbai or Nairobi. Or rather it decentralised, with meetings organised worldwide to keep alive its message that “another world is possible”. Davos became the only globalisation party that month.

WEF week, when all the world’s rich, powerful and intelligent folks gather to discuss the agenda for the year ahead, so dominates the Alpine ski resort that Davos is for most of us an event rather than a place. More than 2,000 participants arrive, checking every two hours a four-day calendar of more than 200 sessions to decide what may be enriching. A debate on sovereign wealth funds? Or on the possibility of America’s economic slowdown grinding into a recession? Or, at 7 am, would it be nicer to hear Bono take on Al Gore on the effects of climate crisis solutions on the world’s poor? Nights in Davos week are spent sleepless, hopping from one party to another, carrying decent shoes in the ubiquitous WEF plastic bags, in which will be deposited clunky snow shoes once indoors.

The debates are many-sided but— oh bliss—how neat it all is. No skirmishes in sessions—even Iranian and American diplomats look civilly away from each other. No overshooting the schedule. Not even Pervez Musharraf would dare do that under the supervision of the presiding deity, WEF executive chairman Klaus Schwab, a Swiss of course. No protestors beyond the barbed wire struggling to show itself above three feet of snow. (The only one I spot on the Promenade, its buildings still square and unspectacular, a legacy of the town’s sanatorium past, is in a wheelbarrow and politely sipping a glass of wine.)

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