The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos is the supreme arena for business optics. While world leaders make news at the formal plenary sessions, high-power networking occurs at private parties in a country better known for stashing away money secretly. So industrialists funding their annual visit to the Swiss Alps, or accompanying spouses who want to frolic in the snow, are perfectly fine—after all, it is done with their money! But when peoples’ elected representatives, accompanied by large taxpayer-funded entourages, fly abroad to sign documents that could just as easily be processed in grand Vidhan Sabhas at Mumbai or Hyderabad – it is fair to question why.
₹30 Lakh Crore Mirage
The official narrative about India’s presence at Davos 2026 is predictably in superlatives, a large political and business delegation amplified by select media presence along with actors and influencers for the social media edge. With multiple ministers, chief ministers (CMs), deputy CMs in attendance, the claim of over ₹30 lakh crore in MoUs (memorandum of understanding) sounds like an economic revolution. A closer look reveals that it is nothing more than Indian wines in Swiss bottles.
Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis announced deals worth a staggering ₹14.5 lakh crore on a single day, but a closer look shows a different reality. A majority of ‘international’ commitments are from domestic giants – Reliance, Adani, Tata, even Infosys, Raheja and Lodha Developers. Embarrassingly, Maharashtra’s biggest deal of ₹1.3 lakh crore, for data centres, was with Abhishek Lodha, the son of a state Cabinet minister. The ‘innovation city’ with Tatas near Mumbai has already been talked about.
The Adani group pledged ₹6 lakh crore for integrated ecosystems and Reliance Industries committed even more to massive artificial intelligence (AI)-ready data centres and other investments across states. The two giants groups are now hyphenated in the public mind for their relentless domestic expansion; iteven became an issue in the recent Mumbai municipal elections. Other notable deals were: K Raheja Corp (₹91,000 crore) for an AI, fin-tech project and Essar Renewables (₹8,000 crore). Did any of these Indian deals with Indian businessmen justify the expense of photo-ops in Davos?
Myth of the Foreign Investor
Indian delegations have touted agreements with a string of foreign companies as the Davos effect. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) signed up a mega deal with 10 firms that included Sumitomo Realty & Development of (Japan) and Brookfield of Canada for renewable energy and real estate investment trusts (REITs). A simple search shows that Sumitomo has been in India since the 1950s while Brookfield has been here since 2014. The auto major, Skoda Auto Volkswagen, and beer giant Carlsberg, which also signed MoUs, have been in Maharashtra since 2007 and only looking to expand existing operations.
It was no different with Telengana, whose pitch was encouraging ‘deep tech’. It signed 20 MoUs worth ₹ 1.79 lakh crore but with whom? Its biggest deals were with Amazon AW for data centres, Sun Petrochemicals for pumped storage and solar energy and Infosys for an IT hub. Jharkhand touted ‘green energy’ and tied up with Tata Steel; Andhra Pradesh signed up with Arcelor Mittal for an integrated steel plant. Uttar Pradesh signed a deal with SAEL Industries, a Delhi headquartered renewable energy company which operates plants in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
A further search reveals that truly ‘new to India’ companies that were supposedly drawn by global networking were tiny and marginal. They include Antora Energy a US-based green tech company planning to invest in thermal batteries; NuKler Products of Slovakia looking at modular reactors; and Sargad LLC which has signed up for an aerospace project in Telangana. But their combined investment is a fraction of the claimed total ‘Davos haul’.
Importantly, with a nation-wide conversion rate of 35%, most of these MoUs don't even materialise after encountering red-tape. Even Maharashtra’s claim of a 75% conversion is not backed by hard data, especially when most significant projects require at least three-to-five years for completion.
In contrast to India’s splashy presence with expensive pavilions and events, China, the second largest economy in the world usually maintains a low-key presence and engages through bilateral meetings.
Mother of All Deals
The only real historic breakthrough on the sidelines of the Davos summit occurred at the government-to-government level: the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Touted as the ‘mother of all deals’ it breaks a 18-year stalemate, slashing tariffs on European cars from 110% to 10% and ensuring 99% of Indian exports enter the European Union (EU) duty-free providing a new option to India exports crushed by Trump tariffs. Unlike MoUs that have a low and unverifiable conversion rate of around 35%, the FTA could save exporters up to €4bn (billion) annually and increase competitiveness of our exporters. The change in how India taxes luxury car imports may have its own domestic consequences too.
Opportunity Cost
India’s presence at Davos was led by four Union ministers, the national security adviser, six CMs (Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand), a couple of deputy CMs from Gujarat and Karnataka and high level delegations from Uttar Pradesh and Kerala. Each of them had a large entourage comprising bureaucrats, public relations (PR) teams and state-sponsored pavilion staff. The cost of each state presence is estimated at ₹40 crore to ₹60 crore—many came back almost empty-handed.
Attracting global businesses, especially those who would create jobs and set up manufacturing facilities, does not come from a once-a-year global networking meet. It is driven by market fundamentals and by providing genuine ease of doing business, world-class infrastructure and a corruption- and red-tape-free working environment. Is it any wonder that the only foreign companies who went along with the Davos drama are those who have learnt to deal with the Indian way of doing things?
More importantly, every state represented at Davos already hosts its own branded events: Vibrant Gujarat, Magnetic Maharashtra, Advantage Assam, Sunrise Andhra Pradesh, Telangana Rising, Momentum Jharkhand and similar ‘Global Investor Summits’ regularly hosted by Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and others. These are designed for the very purpose of attracting investments.
Is an expensive circus to Switzerland required because these state-level extravaganzas, also at public cost, have failed? The reality is that Davos has become a competitive vanity project for CMs, sanctioned by the Union government and funded by the taxpayer. The signing is a pure theatre and a PR festival with businessmen being ordered to fork out funds for their share of the expensive junket.
If the goal is to sign contracts with Indian conglomerates, the venue is redundant. The real goal should be deliver a corruption- and friction-free environment to do business. Job-creating investments from all over the world would naturally follow without any fanfare.
Well said.I think it would be good if a law is made that for future visits like this only 2 or 3 people who are responsible like commerce and industry ministers should go and all deals or MOU should be done with foreign companies and with companies who are already present in India the deals need to be done in India only and not shown as business done .Also each govt need to present as to what was done the previous year and how many have matured and is not only in paper with no progress
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