Adityanath, Bommai, Shinde to join Mandaviya, Irani, Vaishnaw at WEF Davos meet

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Chief Ministers Yogi Adityanath, B S Bommai and Eknath Shinde as well as senior union ministers Mansukh Mandaviya, Ashwini Vaishnaw and Smriti Irani will be among over 100 Indians at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos next month.

While the final schedule and list of attendees are still in the works for the annual congregation of the rich and powerful of the world, to be held from January 16-20, 2023, in the Swiss ski resort town, more than 50 heads of state and government are expected to be there.

There is no official word yet on the participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had first attended the annual event in 2018 and addressed it through video-conferencing in 2021 and 2022 when the Covid-19 restrictions forced the summit to be held online.

Nearly 100 business leaders from India are also expected to be present at the 2023 annual meeting and those include Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, N Chandrasekaran, Nadir Godrej, Adar Poonawalla, Sajjan Jindal, Rajan and Sunil Mittal, Sanjiv Bajaj and Sudarshan Venu.

Besides, Chandrajit Banerjee, Shyam Sunder Bhartia, Hari S Bhartia, Amitabh Chaudhry, G V Prasad, Rajesh Gopinathan, C P Gurnani, Pawan Munjal, Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Nandan Nilekani, Salil Parekh, Rishad Premji, Byju Raveendran and Vijay Shekhar Sharma are also expected to attend the meeting.

Others from India would include G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant, International Solar Alliance Director General Ajay Mathur, Art of Living Founder Sri Sri Ravishankar Venkatratnam, Tamil Nadu minister Thangam Thennarasu, Finance Commission Chairman N K Singh, Telangana minister K T Rama Rao, AAP leader Raghav Chadha, and Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade Secretary Anurag Jain.

While Adityanath has launched a massive outreach programme for global investors to invest in Uttar Pradesh, Bommai and Shinde are also expected to showcase their respective states, Karnataka and Maharashtra, respectively, as attractive investment destinations.

Ministers from Tamil Nadu and Telangana will also promote their respective states.

The union ministers, chief ministers and other leaders from India are expected to attend several events during the five-day summit and on its sidelines.

The annual meeting will return to Davos at its regular January schedule after a gap of three years for its 53rd edition. While the annual meeting of 2021 could not take place physically, the 2022 one had to be postponed due to the Covid pandemic to the month of May.

The 2022 meeting, attended by 2,500 world leaders and experts, focussed mainly on the Ukraine crisis and the future of the global world order, the growing urgency of the climate crisis and its impact on food and poverty, the outlook for the recession and the future of work, and how to end COVID-19 and prepare for the next pandemic.

Some of these issues are expected to re-emerge in January 2023 meeting where top decision-makers, business leaders and civil society members are expected to discuss the way forward for cooperation in a fragmented world.