What's happening in Davos?

Kiran and Debbie dive into the pivotal discussions at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland! This episode covers the impactful meetings and speeches, including those by leaders like US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Unravel how public and private partnerships are shaping the future of technology, climate action, and defense initiatives. Explore India's ambitious 'Make in India' campaign and its potential to become the third-largest economy. Listen and learn about the intricacies of global alliances and economic strategies that are set to redefine our world. 

And don't miss the exciting quiz at the end for a chance to win cool prizes! 

00:00 Introduction to Davos

00:38 The Significance of Davos

02:04 Political Dynamics at Davos

02:24 Trump's Influence and Greenland Controversy

05:39 Canada's Stand on 'Middle Countries'

09:05 India's Role and Technological Ambitions

13:01 Quiz Time!

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Transcript

0:00

Mics Camera. Action. Today we are together. Yeah, talking about a very, very important meeting that's happening in Europe. Happening in Switzerland, which is a very, very beautiful place. You can look it up. Uh, and it's happening in specific in the Alps, right? This little mountain, uh, village town. The place we're talking about today is called Davos, where this very important meeting is happening. You'll go into that in, in just a bit, but Davos has just 10,000 people. Whoa. Yeah. That's like the apartment buildings we live in. Correct? Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, the reason we are talking about Davos is because every year at around this time we have the World Economic Forum, which is a really, really, really big conference or an event where some of the most powerful people from around the world come and they talk about, you know, business, about climate, about many of the things that, um, really will define where the year is going, right? Yeah. Yeah. So all the CEOs of the biggest powerful companies. All the prime ministers and ministers from different countries, all of them kind of come together. This meeting is basically meant for a lot of public and private partnerships to be forged. Yeah. Public is basically, like you were saying, governments, prime ministers, leaders of different countries come together, not just countries. Mm-hmm. You have states also that are represented. For example, India is at, Davos and India has different ministers from nine different states who were there talking to different companies, building those partnerships and relationships and signing many, many agreements and deals for billions and billions of dollars for different projects. Yeah. Technology, AI was a big thing that they discussed as well. Climate, climate infrastructure, defense. Yeah. So many different things. Many deals are signed at Davos. So it's a, it's a big deal. Yeah. And it happens every January, like you said, by the World Economic Forum. And this year was, uh, slightly different, or rather it's still going on and it's kind of started off in a very different way. Usually the focus is on, you know, deals and the economy and trading and business. This year it's gotten a little bit more political. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. It has been very political and, one, one guess as to why. Our favorite person ever Trump was there. Obviously Trump is the leader of one of the biggest, I mean, of, of the world, of the biggest, the biggest superpower in the world. Yeah. And, uh, the conversation. As you might have guessed based on our previous episodes, was about how the US can become even more powerful, right? And that is about all about how the US can set up different partnership. What the US has a say in and Greenland. Mm-hmm. Whether the US gets to take Greenland and make it its own. That was also part of the conversation. And then on the flip side, when you have one person who says, Hey, I'm going to be the biggest boss in the room, you have others who will say. No, we don't have to listen to you. We will form our own alliances and not let you make all the decisions. Right. And that's exactly what happened at Davos. you know, Just talking about Greenland, he came out and, um, if you read all the articles, it's like everyone was clamoring to get into that room when he was about to make a speech. And his speech, everyone knew was about, um, Greenland. And, a lot of how you either play with the US or you are against the US and Greenland, he made some very interesting comments. He said, um, we are definitely not gonna use force, no military. Yeah. Um, that'll come in and try to take over Greenland because, you know, this is not a region that does not have backing, it has backing of the Danish government, of a lot of the European countries. So, um, there's a lot of power behind Greenland. And so he can't just come in like in Venezuela where there's not much of a resistance and take over the place, right? So, um, that was interesting. He said there would be no, uh, military use, but he also then said that he got into an agreement with the NATO. Which is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is basically the countries that are around the North Atlantic Ocean mm-hmm. Coming together to kind of, uh, defend and yeah support each other more from a military and defense perspective. So with the nato, he said that the conversation was about, you know, coming to a, um, sort of agreement. And he won't impose the trade tariffs that he had talked about that he had threatened earlier. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, we'll get to know more about that in just a bit. so a lot of things happening as far as Trump is concerned, but the main thing is he's still kind of going back to our playground analogy, being that one kid who says, if you do not play with me. I will not play with you and I am gonna make your life hell. and do not play with me by my rules. Correct. That's the thing. Only my game. Yeah. It's not anyone else's like he's feeling left out or anything. No. He just wants to be the one who everyone listens to. He's shouted at the European Union, which is a group of countries in Europe that, you know, it's called the European Union. And he said, you guys are, you know, doing a lot of bad things for your um, region. Making bad decisions, you guys need to shape up and listen to me. Yep. Now obviously that's not gonna go down well because you have leaders from so many countries coming there and then they don't want to be scolded. Mm-hmm. Nobody likes to follow someone else's rules and one country in particular. Yep. Really spoke up and how. Kiran Yep. You really loved that speech, didn't you? Yeah, it was amazing. So this what we are talking about is, uh, Canada and Canada's, uh, prime Minister Mark Carney. He basically had a fairly, I would say, interesting speech because it wasn't about defending, it was kind of talking about the new normal. Mark Carney is a finance guy. He's been the governor of the, uh, banks in Canada. And then he got elected to being the prime minister, similar to Trump. That he businessman. Yeah. He was a businessman. More economic rather than political. Yeah then got into politics and, one of the things that he said was, you know what used to be the world as it used to be, is no longer gonna be, yeah. Everyone knows that with Trump coming in and, you know, breaking all the rules or breaking even, partnerships that used to exist. So his whole point is, there are the middle countries and he calls Canada the middle country because it's not a superpower, right? Yeah. It's not the US it's not Russia, it's not China. It's not a superpower from that perspective, but it's a very, very important economic zone and country and you know, supporter of a lot of different initiatives. So he's like the middle countries have to kind of now reassess and reevaluate how they partner and who they partner with. And the fact is you don't have to re align with one guy. Yeah. For everything. You don't have to align with one country for everything you can now, you will now see countries forming smaller blocks or smaller groups for various different initiatives. Right. And, um, uh, the one your favorite. Yeah, the one favorite quote, that he came up with is, uh, and I'm not saying it verbatim, but it was to the extent of saying that if we are not part of the table, then we are on the menu. Yeah. So think about that. That is, you're sitting at a restaurant and if you're not at the table making a decision, making decisions, rather making a decision, make and choosing what to eat, you are gonna be what's eaten. Right? Oh my gosh. That's a really, really strong statement from Carney. The world is split up into three main superpowers, right? Yeah. What are they? The US which is the, the main superpower. Russia and China are the other two. Right. And so all the other countries, you know, is it that these three guys are going to be making all our decisions? That's what he's basically saying. Yeah. We have to speak up and we have to make our own alliances. Yeah. And, uh, start taking matters into our own hands. Yeah. Like in school, right. We always had cool kids and we always had, groups where some people will think of another group as a cool group and vice versa. And so it's not just about aligning with that one or two groups who are always in front and center. It's about also aligning with others. Yeah. Who have the same wavelength and, and it's totally fine to do that. He's also talked about being more inclusive. You talked about equity. What does that mean? Basically, everyone should get similar opportunities to grow and to thrive. Right. Which is, which is only fair. And I think it's also asking countries to reevaluate how they're thinking about aligning with different, um, regions, right? You don't always have to only align with the US. Maybe you can work with the European Union for certain things. You can work with Canada for others. He's called on, you know, parts of the European Union to collaborate with Canada. He's called upon India to collaborate with Canada. A lot of very interesting movements that'll kind of happen. And India, you mentioned India. Yeah. Let's talk about that a little bit. Like I said, India played a pretty, interesting role at Davos. We go every year. Lots of deals are signed, as we mentioned. This year of course, um, there was a lot of talk about AI and India wasn't there. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there was, there's this whole push of make in India, right, which, uh, has been happening for the last couple of years or last few years. The whole push of 'make in India' is two-pronged. One is to basically help build India as an economy and make it the third largest economy in the world. Right now it's the fourth. Um, and so try and push it to being the third largest economy in the world, which is a, a big, big deal, right? If we do become the world's third largest economy. With actual numbers, then, you know, that's an amazing place to be. And with the fact that, AI and computing is gonna be the next frontier of investment because there's just so much investment going in, I think a lot of Indian cities, a lot of Indian states are trying to become that, um, sort of. Server farm, right? Yeah. Server farm or build more infrastructure for digital, for semiconductors. Yeah. And but not just infrastructure, right? They're also pitching themselves in the services space. Yeah. Right. Because we have such strong manpower, basically, you know, we have a lot of very, very talented people. Yep. Lot of very, very talented engineers, for example, who can sit and actually create and write new models and, you know, really take AI really far, which a lot of other countries don't have. Right. Yeah. So that's one of our, one of our strengths. One of our strengths, exactly. So they're saying, pay attention to India because this is where it's going to happen. Yeah. Don't, don't ignore us. And, and I just thinking about the semiconductor industry, right? Semiconductors are basically those building blocks that create the servers, that create the infrastructure on which AI runs, right? Right. So it's the base level of building that entire infrastructure. India has actually been fairly powerful and uh, has a lot of good talent in the design of these semiconductors. But the manufacturing has never happened in India. Mm. And so now a lot of Indian governments are trying to build semiconductor and fab units, they call fabrication units in these cities. Which will then lead to more, which cities are they talking about? So there is Hyderabad. There in Maharashtra they're actually going very aggressively. Karnataka is going very aggressively in this. Um, you know, so Telangana Maharashtra. Karnataka. Yeah. It's a really interesting play to push manufacturing as well, because I think there's gonna be a lot of growth in manufacturing across not just semiconductors, but other, re other industries as well. So that's so super interesting, right? There was the political piece. Yeah. That we discussed, that happened at uh, uh, at Davos. The second piece was technology and AI was part of that. Elon Musk, by the way, was also mm-hmm. That's our second favorite person after Trump, I think, on Karro. Elon Musk was also a Davos, and he actually made one statement, which stuck out for me is that soon the world will have more robots than humans. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, so that, those conversations happen. But what is interesting is normally at diversity, they also talk about climate change. They talk about sustainability, but this time it didn't feel like it was a very important part of the agenda Yeah. At all. It was more about the political games and political partnerships, which had a business, um, angle to it. And so this is what's really important for all of us to understand, right? When we talk about politics, it is not separate from business. It is always hand in hand. Some of the biggest influencers of politics are actually the biggest companies in the world. Yes. And so, um, they go hand in hand. So when you're talking about politics, you're also thinking about the economy, you're thinking about businesses, you're thinking about how one feeds into the other and helps because policies define how businesses work and vice versa. Well. I think we covered a lot of what happened mm-hmm at Davos. There's a lot, there are many parallel conversations that happened. We just tried to give you some of the highlights. Okay. That brings us to the end of this episode. We, we will not go without quiz question. Yeah. Without a quiz question. So it's time for the quiz. The question we are asking is, what is Trump's new international organization called? Okay. Yeah. So we've briefly talked about alliances, remember? Mm-hmm. So Trump is making a new alliance. He's called for invited, rather different leaders from different countries to be part of this new group that he's putting together. What is this group called? And this group is being brought together for the reconstruction of Gaza. Yes. That is one of the priorities for that, one of the key priorities. Right. But it's also one of the stepping stones into building a more from this group, right? Yeah. So, um, yeah, it's, uh, interesting. Uh, there are many countries which are not part of it. India is not yet part of it. A lot of countries in the European Union are not part of it. Um, Canada, China, Canada isn't part of it. I Canada, uh, none of them are part of it. And, um, he's trying to create his own group, his own playground group. Right? Yep. So what is that group called? And we are gonna give you options, okay? Mm-hmm. Option one is Board of Friends. Ooh. Option two, Board of Canada. Mm-hmm. Option three, Board of Gaza and Option four, Board of Peace. Excellent. One of those names is actually the name of a musical group, if you believe it or not, but that's not the answer we are looking for. Yeah, that's not the answer. We want to know what Trump's new group of friends is called. Okay. So as usual, make sure you send in your entry. It need not be the first entry, need not be the last entry, need not be how many times you've, uh, sent us an entry. Keep sending it in and one lucky winner will be picked to get a Takaro kids t-shirt and a gift voucher. So go to our website, takarokids.com or onto our Instagram and, uh, send us a message on Instagram. It could be from your parents, um, account. Just send us your name, make sure that your name, your age, and which city your in is part of this answer. Yeah. And with that, we'll also announce last week's winner. Mm-hmm. The question we asked was. What is India's Iran connection? Yeah. Rather, what is that community in India that migrated from Iran, thousands and thousands of years ago that came and settled here in India? What is that community called? Yep. We didn't give you options. The correct answer, and if you guessed it well done is the Parsi community. Mm-hmm. Now the Parsi community is found in all over the country, but mainly you'll find them in Gujarat and Mumbai. And the lucky winner of last week's quiz is Leila, a 10-year-old from Kolkata. Congratulations, Leila. Your gift certificate and your t-shirt is gonna arrive very, very soon. So be like Leila. Send in your answers and listen to every single episode of Takaro Kids. You will learn a lot and you will get to win a lot as well. On that note, it's time for us to say goodbye. Bye-bye. Full stop.