A day before the start of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Europe’s highest city has been turned into a fortress with the deployment of 5,000 Swiss Army personnel. Over the next week, the small alpine resort town will host some of the world’s biggest names for a rare annual gathering – from business to government and civil society to arts and culture and many more.
The Swiss Parliament has approved the deployment of a maximum of 5,000 troops, some of whom are equipped with the latest gadgets like drones and AI-powered devices, to support the large number of police and civilian personnel deployed to secure the Swiss Skiting town . Given the high-profile nature of the event, which begins on Monday, security is both discreet and visible and includes snipers, drone jammers, regular searches and checks and round-the-clock patrolling.
The 2025 WEF meeting will take place from January 20-24, but the Swiss military mission will last from January 14-30. The 55th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum will be held under the theme Cooperation for an Intelligent Age.
All about the World Economic Forum in Davao
It all started in the early 1970s when the Cold War divided the world while the Vietnam War divided America. The world was facing an oil crisis when a brilliant idea came to the mind of a German economics professor. Professor Klaus Schwab came up with the “stakeholder theory”, which states that “a company should serve all its stakeholders, not just its shareholders – employees, suppliers, and the community of which it is a part.” This idea was popular at the time “It was unconventional, but it has since caught on.”
According to Schwab, “It is a form of capitalism in which companies not only optimize short-term profits for shareholders, but also seek long-term value creation while taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders and society at large.”
In 1971, Professor Schwab founded the World Economic Forum as a non-profit foundation under the supervision of the Swiss federal government to promote stakeholder capitalism. He chose Davos as the home for the annual meeting to escape every day the mountains that represent them in Swiss and German culture.
Initially, the Forum focused on how European companies could keep pace with American management practices. But by 1973, due to global events such as the Arab–Israeli War and the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate mechanism, the annual gathering expanded its focus from management to economic and social issues.
In 1975, the Forum introduced a membership system for ‘the world’s 1,000 leading companies’. Since then, every year, Davos brings together approximately 3,000 participants (including paid members and selected invitees) for a five-day summit discussing global issues, including investors, business leaders, political leaders, economists, celebrities. Celebrities and journalists are included.
According to the Forum’s official site, over the past fifty years, Davos has addressed major events in world history, ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the rise of economic globalization and climate change. It also contributed to averting war between Greece and Turkey, built economic bridges around the world, and gave a platform to leading environmentalists, among other things.
List of key attendees at 2025 WTF
US President-elect Donald Trump, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be among 60 top political leaders from around the world who will address the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos from Monday.
Announcing the detailed programme, the Geneva-based WEF last week said the meeting would be attended by about 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries, including 350 government leaders.
Among top political leaders, Trump will join participants via live video link for an interactive dialogue, while in-person attendees will include European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, China’s Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Argentina’s President Javier Meili. , President of the European Parliament Roberta Metzola, President of South Africa Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa, and President of Spain Pedro Sanchez.
Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, Chief Advisor to the Government of Bangladesh Muhammad Yunus, President Abdulatif Rashid of Iraq, President Isaac Herzog of Israel, President Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority Mohammad Mustafa, President Tharman Shanmugaratnam of Singapore, President of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vietnam PM Pham Minh Chinh will also be there.
The heads of international organizations attending will include WTO’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva, NATO’s Mark Rutte, WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and UNDP’s Achim Steiner.
The Indian participation will include five Union ministers – Ashwini Vaishnav, CR Patil, K Ram Mohan Naidu, Chirag Paswan and Jayant Choudhary – and three chief ministers – Devendra Fadnavis, N Chandrababu Naidu and Revanth Reddy along with other ministers from other states. And over 100 CEOs.
With the global economy facing a period of radical change, the five-day meeting starting on January 20 will focus on restarting growth, harnessing new technologies and strengthening social and economic resilience, the WEF said in a statement. Will be found out.
More than 1,600 business leaders, including more than 900 of the world’s top CEOs, will also be attending, along with more than 120 global innovators, tech pioneers and unicorns who are driving change across industries.
More than 170 leaders from civil society and the social sector – including labor unions, NGOs, religious and indigenous communities, as well as experts and heads of the world’s leading universities, research institutes and think tanks – will participate. meeting.
India Pavilion
There was a tough competition among Indian states to set up individual pavilions along the promenade at Davos during the World Economic Forum (WEF). It was a race for big villas to attract global investors and make their mark. But, in a significant change, there will be only two Indian pavilions this year – one with a central government delegation while the other with delegations from six states – Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. However, all states will reportedly have their own floors in the second pavilion.
Talking about the WTF 2025 agenda, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Sunday said there is a lot of interest globally in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic policies, which will be the focus of discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Vaishnav is leading the Indian delegation at the annual World Economic Forum meeting starting on Monday. He said that there is a lot of interest in India’s growth story among the international community, especially around digital transformation and new digital architecture.
“At the World Economic Forum in Davos, there is a lot of interest in our thought process, the economic policy of the Prime Minister, about digital transformation, the way India has created new digital architecture under the Digital India program and the way we understand the technology It’s been democratized, there’s a lot of interest in it,” he said.
He said there will be detailed discussions on inclusive growth, investment in social, physical, digital infrastructure and democratizing technology.
“The Prime Minister has focused very much on inclusive growth and development which brings a huge transformational change in the lives of the people at the bottom, the people who have been deprived of development for the last several decades,” he said. Vaishnav, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Railways and Electronics and Information Technology.
“Whether it is providing bank accounts, toilets, gas connections, tap water connections, creating infrastructure in villages, creating infrastructure in urban areas, this is something that the world wants to understand,” he said.
