Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman, World Economic Forum, while speaking at the session on 'Global Challenges in India' at the India Economic Summit jointly organised by World Economic Forum and Confederation of Indian Industry, listed ten major challenges that the contemporary world confronts.
According to him the rise of India and China which has shifted the global gravity centre from west to east was one of them, followed by competition for resources, global interdependence in a multipolar world as well as global jobs deficit and search for decent work.
Schwab said that global economic imbalance in production, consumption, savings and investment patterns need to be solved by proactive procedures. And the search for identity in a fast changing world, in particular the fight against negativism, extremism, fundamentalism, nationalism and protectionism need to be addressed.
He stressed the importance of implementing the democratic agenda on an individual as well as on a collective level and also spoke about the new age intergenerational tensions concerning pensions, climate change, clean water, education and debt that need to be mastered.
"The world has to fight the unacceptable: illicit global networks, failed states, poverty, infectious diseases, lack of basic healthcare," he said. He also elaborated on a global leadership deficit, "which is capable of managing complexity, understanding new paradigms and following the creative imperative."
Schwab suggested that the race against time could be won not through confrontation but through the '3Bs' process, which means:
- Bonding in terms of problem identification,
- Binding in the meaning of objective identification, and
- Building action identification.
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