It took me two hours to drive from Mumbai’s international airport into the city last week. Not because it was rush hour or because some festival disrupted traffic but because this is how it is in the city we like to think of as our Shanghai, our New York. How deluded can we get! The drive was tedious but gave me time to reflect on the slums I drove past in slow motion. I saw small, half-naked children playing on the edge of open sewers while their mothers washed clothes in filthy water and I gawped with Davos-returned eyes at the windowless hovels in which half the citizens of our commercial capital live.

Just as I was beginning to collapse into terminal depression at the everyday realities of Bharat Mata my cellphone signalled a message. It said, ‘The land of picturesque destinations welcomes you to Maharashtra. Select IDEA/INA 22/40422 manually to enjoy quality roaming.’ It came as a reminder that India now has the most modern technologies in the world but neither the governance nor the political vision to use them to win our biggest battle: the war against poverty.

In Davos I attended sessions on urbanisation, poverty, healthcare and water and heard experts talk about the solutions that could be brought through using modern technology. There are some solutions that do not even need technology. I heard the rock star, Bono, talk of the dramatic changes that mosquito nets had brought in the lives of African children and Bill Gates talk of the gains achieved through what he calls ‘creative capitalism’.

... contd.