The Indian Economic Summit 2007, organised by the World Economic Forum on the broad theme of ‘Building Centres of Excellence’, concluded earlier this week. As usual, it succeeded in getting a fair mix of policy-makers, corporates, and academics to speak with reasonable candour.

World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab mentioned to me that these summits have had their ups and downs but getting high quality foreign participation in the last couple of years has been effortless. This is not surprising, considering that India is the current global flavour, accentuated in no small measure by the impending uncertainties elsewhere. There were several interesting sessions. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram was honest enough to admit that coalition politics had stymied reforms in several key areas, particularly in the financial sector. His optimism about some tangible progress in the remaining 18 months of this government in stalled areas like pension, insurance, and disinvestments deserves our fullest encouragement. May he succeed.

One of the more interesting session was on the broad theme of ‘Power Equation: Implications for India’, with speakers like Mukesh D. Ambani, Senator Robert F. Bennett, Stephen S. Roach, Anand G. Mahindra and Hector de J. Ruiz. Not surprisingly, Senator Bennett was deeply concerned that at a time when the US economy was passing through significant uncertainties, perceptions mattered even more than reality. Repetitive themes by some TV commentators that jobs in the US were being stolen by India and China only reinforced a growing protectionist lobby. In today’s context, economic anxieties, more than even Iraq, were uppermost in the mind of the US electorate.

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