The abstractions of freedom

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Davos, Jan 26: Davos can be life-altering experience only if you take the business of attending sessions seriously. The manner in which some of these sessions are structured is designed not just to provoke discussions, but more importantly question the over-arching status quo.

My fourth day at Davos began with a very early breakfast session hosted by the global CEO of Nestle. The topic was not consumer marketing or building brands but, instead, a discussion on biotechnology and the role that companies like Nestle would have to play. Being an early riser helps, but when you are lucky to be invited to a session such as this, the benefits are incomparable and I am glad I made it to the breakfast.

There were eight speakers representing eight streams of thought, each of them a global leader. Our very own NK Singh was one of the speakers, but if you looked around the room, you possibly had about 40 of the top Fortune 100 CEOs, not to mention academics and such like. And this when the total size of the audience must have been about 50, if that! One must compliment the role that Nestle’s legendary CEO Peter Brabeck-Lemathe is playing in bringing this whole business of GM foods and the role that biotechnology can play in not only ensuring better and more robust crop patterns but, more critically, the manner in which this is done around the world.

There were some startling facts that came to light: did you know it takes 8,000 gallons (yes, you read right) of water to create one pair of jeans. Yes, that is the kind of wastage we are talking about and Peter’s point about treating water with care could not have been made before a wiser audience. In fact, seated at my table was the Nestle director of Asia, Oceania and the Middle East, Frits van Dijk, and I mentioned to Frits that India would benefit from a mini debate on this issue given the wastage we are seeing in our agriculture processes.

I was surprisingly impressed with what my good friend Martin Sorrell had to say: Martin is better at figures than on GM foods but he too highlighted some critical issues that confront consumers when they look at modified foods, especially given the naturalness which exists in the relationship with what they eat!

Some of the other speakers included Hugh Grant (not the actor), the CEO of Monsanto, Jurgen Hambrecht, the CEO of BASF, and Hans Joachim-Krober, the CEO of Metro.

From the Nestle breakfast I went back to the hotel to catch the end of Kamal Nath’s breakfast with key Indian CEOs and Michael Dell, Arun Sarin and Watanabe.

There were just about 12 of us being briefed by Kamal on his stand on the WTO and I think Rahul Bajaj made a pertinent point when he said that he was being confronted by some global CEOs who were of the opinion that India was a stumbling block in progress on the WTO and that there would be a lot of finger-pointing.

Enough food for thought for Kamal, I guess.

Sunil Mittal and I again made our trudge to the Congress Centre where I attended the two finest sessions in Davos yet. In the first, ‘Is freedom overrated?’, the panelists included Cheng Siwei, vice-chairman of the standing committee, National People’s Congress of China; Shimon Peres, deputy prime minister of Israel; and Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard. The only weak spot was some very biased and poor chairing by Laura Tyson who believes in view imposition rather than fair discussion.

It is clear that China is in denial about basic human rights and what freedom actually is. What is strange is that the western world believes all of humanity is connected through the net: a fallacy that did get corrected finally. But the best of the lot was easily Shimon Peres who, even at this age, possesses amazing mental agility, which shone through all the way.

I then attended the ‘Wisdom of the Youth’ session which had Queen Rania of Jordan and Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the United Kingdom. The best thing about this session was the articulation with which each of the panelists spoke.

There were also six youngsters on stage who had been selected as part of a British Council initiative and what was amazing is that the Forum actually saw the commitment towards creating a Global Education Fund and an international Pledging Conference is on the way. In response to a comment from me, Gordon Brown gushed about India and how he believed that India was leading the way in terms of education.

Thank God, Gordon didn’t meet Arjun Singh.