The Forum in Mauritius, a new platform to enable voices from the Global South to suggest implementable solutions to problems of international immediacy -- particularly relating to developing countries -- will be inaugurated on October 22 in Port Louis. Please contact: adeela@marcom.com

Dubai leads the way in “soft infrastructure”   By Pranay Gupte (Published in Khaleej Times, June 28, 2010)   By now it’s become a cliché that the United Arab Emirates – and Dubai, in particular – enjoy one of the best infrastructures anywhere in the world. As with many clichés, this one has the added value of being true.   “Infrastructure” typically includes roads, power grids, ports and airports, and tel...

Please check this out: His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, and Ruler of Dubai, has a Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/sheikhmohammed.

Based on projections from the Energy Information Administration's February 2009 Short Term Energy Outlook (STEO), members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) could earn $402 billion of net oil export revenues in 2009 and $530 billion in 2010. Last year, OPEC earned $971 billion in net oil export revenues, a 42 percent increase from 2007. Saudi Arabia earned the largest share of these earnings, $288 billion, representing 30 percent of total OPEC revenues. On a per-cap...

It’s probably unwise, if not unseemly and unkind, to say it, but the terrorism that afflicted Mumbai these last few days is almost certain to have financial implications for India and the United Arab Emirates.   It isn’t untimely, however, to suggest that those implications could be negative and positive for both countries.   Let’s start with tourism, which accounts for nearly 6 percent of India’s trillion-dollar economy. In the short to medium run, ten...

When I was very young and single and living in New York, I would visit my parents in my native city of Mumbai from time to time. They would predictably make mighty efforts to find a bride for me in the traditional custom of conservative Hindu families. I was, after all, an only child, and it was understandable that my parents dreaded the prospect – however unlikely – that I would wind up with an American spouse.   An endless procession of eligible Indian women would be br...

There’s a major square in South Mumbai – a complex intersection, really – that mirrors the open, secular and trusting society that India has always been.   In and around the square, there are small haberdasheries run by Hindus and groceries owned by Muslims; there’s a Catholic church; there’s a theater that exhibits brash foreign films, and another one that features Bollywood fare. There are tiny eateries that offer everything from samosas to sandwiches....

So it has happened, and very early on the morning after history had been made, one of America’s authentic legends, Theodore C. Sorensen, was savoring it all in his lovely apartment overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park.   A score of close friends had spent the previous evening at his apartment, watching the results of the election that made Barack Obama the 44 th president of the United States. The 80-year-old Sorensen, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s closest ai...

NEW YORK, November 4 – I wanted to be a witness to history. That’s why I decided to fly 7,000 miles from my new home in Dubai to my old home in America.   I could have cast an absentee ballot in the American presidential election, of course – the United States Consulate is in the building next to where I live on Sheikh Zayed Road. But I flew back in order to vote in person. I flew back to see for myself what it would be like when Americans choose a new president aft...

I flew 7,000 miles to America from Dubai in order to vote in the US presidential election. I could have cast an absentee ballot, but I wanted to come home to Brooklyn and be part of history.

EIA estimates that members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) earned $671 billion in net oil export revenues in 2007, a 10 percent increase from 2006. Saudi Arabia earned the largest share of these earnings, $194 billion, representing 29 percent of total OPEC revenues. On a per-capita basis, OPEC net oil export earning reached $1,137, a 8 percent increase from 2006. Through August, OPEC had earned an estimated $740 billion in net oil exp...

Davos 2008 (Published in TIME Magazine, January 31, 2008) By Michael Elliott High winds on the last day of this year's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos prevented me from taking my usual run from the top of the Weissfluhjoch to Klosters, thinking on the way of what I'd learned during the week. I wasn't too upset. Deprived of my usual partner on the pistes — Martin Lukes, ex-CEO of a-b Glöbâl, who was unavoidably absent from this year's meeting — the long trail down int...

COLUMN-Bush, Rice and irrational optimism By Bernd Debusmann Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:00am EST (Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own) WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Condoleezza Rice said it so often that it could have been the motto of last November's Annapolis conference on the Middle East: "Failure is not an option." Catchy and upbeat, the words would fit nicely on a bumper sticker. George W. Bush opened his last year in office with his first visit...

When more than 3,000 world leaders and journalists start their, well, deliberations on the snowy – and often snow-bound – ski resort of Davos on Wednesday at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum January 23-26, they may well run into inclement weather, not unusual for this Alpine village in eastern Switzerland. Indeed, several mandarins of the global business and political communities have suggested over the years – the late Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, and Steve Forbes amo...

The Man at the Summit: Profile of Klaus Schwab (Longer Version on an Article Published in Portfolio.Com, January 18, 2008) By Pranay Gupte Not many people know that Klaus Schwab started the World Economic Forum in 1971 as a nice way to get together some of his fellow European academics, along with a sprinkling of management types, for some serious skiing in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos. Schwab, the Harvard-trained management specialist who then taught at the University of Gen...