DAVOS: This year’s World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos is taking place under a cloud of popular anger that has destabilised major democracies from the US to Europe and Brazil.

The agency spoke to one of the event’s most trenchant critics, Anand Giridharadas, a former McKinsey consultant and ex-columnist for The New York Times.

His book “Winners Take All” torches what he calls the hypocrisy of an out-of-touch elite. Here are excerpts from the interview.

– What is Davos? –
It’s basically lobbying under the guise of an ideas conference. You get to party together, you get to know each other and sit on panels together.

It becomes this perfect way in which the rich and powerful are able to take their parochial interests and values and launder them into common values.

When that is the company you keep, it is difficult to think your way out of sharing its values and assumptions.

Davos conversations are not about how do you increase market share in China. I would actually respect that conference more.

This whole thing has become so exhausting because we have now asked the Davos elite to take care of the common good for which they are not qualified and of which they have no interest.

app