Davos, in black and white

When the distinguished guests at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos settled down for dinner after their hand-wringing and heart-wrenching discussions on how to manage globalisation in the interests of corporations, few, if any, would have noted one of the exotic items that was being served as dessert. Chakravarthi Raghavan comments.

Tete-de-negre is the French name for a dessert, a pastry covered with black chocolate.

Tete means 'head'; and negre means 'black', but ethnically, is a pejorative usage for 'Negro'. And according to Harrap's French-English dictionary, tete-de-negre literally means 'nigger-brown' colour.

Just as it has become, since the late 1960s, no longer acceptable to use the term 'nigger' or 'negro' in America, tete-de-negre, the once common dessert on menus in restaurants and cafes in Switzerland and in France etc, is no longer served under that name. In some places the black chocolate covering has been replaced by white chocolate, but not sold as tete-de-blanc!

The World Economic Forum is an annual event that takes place end-January at Davos, a very fashionable high-cost ski resort in Switzerland, with white snow-packed hills on all sides. The Davos symposium is a clever marketing operation, a very profitable Swiss one run by Prof. Klaus Schwab, and the Swiss and local authorities try to ensure that anti-globalisation people do not foregather or hold rival events.

'Intellectual forum'

And the media too flock there - at least those representatives who can convince their home offices about the importance of the event and the need to incur huge costs to cover it. But covering it needs the patronage and facilities of Schwab and his group. If you fall foul of them, even hotel space may be impossible to get at Davos!

The WEF has pretentions to be an 'intellectual forum' where new or advanced ideas are discussed and implemented by governments. For the last few years, 'globalisation' was the buzzword, with governments lectured on what they need to do in an unstoppable and inevitable process. Not too long ago in this decade, the organisers and CEOs thought international and intergovernmental organisations to be irrelevant, and the WEF became a god laying down the rules for others.

This year, though, Schwab and the CEOs were all wringing hands and talking about how to manage globalisation, and what governments should do to make the world safer for Corporations.

And dutifully, Third World leaders and executives of international organisations trek up to Davos to pay obeisance and narrate how they are liberalising and globalising. In the 1980s, Schwab was courting them to come to Davos. Now they seek or beg for invitations to pay obeisance at Schwab's court.

The UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was there this year, as last, and excelled himself. Last December at the UN in New York, he was arguing for a greater UN role in economic policy matters. But this January he went to Davos, and delivered a speech (written up by his speech-writers, a team strengthened recently by a Financial Times columnist). Annan called for a compact between transnational corporations (TNCs) and the UN: that if the TNCs support human rights, better working conditions and environmentally sound policies, the UN will provide political support for an 'open global market'.

'Footnote'

According to participants at this year's WEF, at the dessert table at the buffet gala dinner was tete-de-negre - with eyebrows, eyes, mouth and moustache garnished in white. A friend who attends Davos regularly, brought a piece to us.

At Davos, the friend said, diners helped themselves to it, but no one, not even any of the dignitaries and high officials of international organisations who were present, was upset or offended. Perhaps they did not even notice it!

As one participant put it, for most of those at the gala - the business groups and journalists and the heads and officials of various international organisations - it was a small 'footnote that went unreported in the media. Journalists who go there annually won't annoy Prof. Schwab with critical reports, lest they be excluded next year.

The above article first appeared in the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) of which Chakravarthi Raghavan is the Chief Editor.