13 March 2026
Published on Substack
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There’s been a Raisina Dialogue in Delhi every March since 2016. It’s the brainchild of Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Narendra Modi’s long-serving foreign minister. Like other global gatherings, it brings together political leaders, senior military commanders, prominent business people, leading journalists, and think tank chiefs to discuss key issues; but it’s better than Davos because it’s not so dominated by politically correct plutocrats; and better than the longer-running Chinese Boao Forum, because it not essentially an exercise in homage to the host government.
I started attending virtually, during the pandemic, and have been there in person since 2022.
Because it’s India, there’s a lot of emphasis on the “global south”; but equally, because it’s India, there’s a recognition that fine sentiment shouldn’t be taken too seriously, especially if it’s masking grievance and rent seeking; and that, in the end, noble aspirations have to take into account hard power and economic strength.
To his credit, Jaishankar invariably attends numerous sessions, sometimes simply sitting in the audience, sometimes a key note speaker, and sometimes one of up to a half dozen discussants on any particular topic; politely agreeing or taking issue with his fellow panelists, as the debate goes. Remarkably for someone of such accomplishment, successively India’s ambassador to China, the United States, and head of the Ministry of External Affairs, before becoming the Foreign Minister, Jai doesn’t talk down, and is on “receive” far more often than “transmit”.
Indeed, at this conference, rank has no privileges; it might get you onto the stage as a speaker or panelist, but it’s the quality of the contribution that counts. After all, no one has a monopoly on knowledge or wisdom and everyone should be there to justify ideas and to learn from the discussion.
At every dialogue so far, Prime Minister Modi has set the example, attending the opening session, to hear the principal guest – last year the Prime Minister of New Zealand; this year the President of Finland – but not speaking himself. After the US and Chinese presidents, he’s probably the most immediately powerful person in the world, yet he’s not too proud to listen as well as to lead. Despite over a decade in office, perhaps because of his youth as kind of Hindu monk, Modi has thusfar managed to resist the hubris of power.
And as for this notion that India, under the BJP, has somehow become an authoritarian state, that’s total BS. No country with free and fair elections, a riotously free media, and a robustly independent judiciary is in serious danger of dictatorship. And no dictatorship would host a global conference where nothing is off-limits and no one is shouted down. This year’s dialogue, after all, heard from both the Israeli foreign minister (virtually) and the Iranian deputy foreign minister.
Formally, Raisina is a collaboration between the Observer Research Foundation, part of the Ambani-Reliance philanthropic network, and the Indian government. As well, there’s some meal sessions that are sponsored by business. Even there, Raisina impresario-in-chief, Dr Samir Saran, pointedly or humorously, is on hand to make sure that no one turns it into a personal or commercial advertisement. For instance, when an AUKUS discussion started to get willing, without minimising the arrangement’s significance, he assuaged the “southists” by observing that it was white guys wanting to keep their nuclear secrets to themselves.
As at most international conferences, the discussion is in English; these days, the world’s common language. This is where India has a priceless advantage over China, having assimilated from its former coloniser, not just democracy and the rule of law, but the global language of commerce, administration and science.
It’s three days of mostly panel discussion. Normally, a moderator kicks things off with a question to everyone on stage, then there’s a chance for each panellist to agree or disagree with the others, followed by 10 or 15 minutes of questions from the floor, mostly starting with the Young Raisina fellows, an eclectic mix of bright young things from around the world. In that sense, it’s more like a university for the mature aged than a standard meeting of the great and good: with observations that entirely miss the point; as well as some that, by disagreeing with the whole premise of the discussion, keep-at-bay the group think that big global conferences are prone to.
Here’s my three main take-outs from this year’s Raisina, in ascending order of importance.
Why is that nearly every discussant at global conferences feels the need to acknowledge the importance of multilateralism? What really matters is making a difference and the problem with multilateralism is that nothing happens unless everyone agrees. Maybe it’s the fact that most Raisina panels had one or two participants from continental Europe. It might be the natural tendency to avoid giving offence – but at least in conference-land, the EU, where national differences dissolve and an elite consensus reigns, seems to be regarded as the ideal form of governance, even though “Europe” is much better at bleating about threats to the “rules-based global order” than actually countering them.
To me, the most frustrating panel was on climate finance. The participants all agreed that it was absolutely necessary to achieve Net Zero ASAP, even though, for each country, the cost would be in trillions; but, somehow, the benefits of “climate action” made it all worthwhile, either because higher temperatures would destroy agriculture (largely false), or would cause millions to die from heat stroke (even though, with technology, people can readily adapt to hotter or colder climes). I hope my contrarian question whether any conceivable benefit is worth the astronomical cost, doesn’t get me un-invited next year!
Finally, there’s the sniffy assumption that the world’s ills are mainly due to Donald Trump – the Voldemort figure whose name was hardly raised but whose actions shaped nearly every discussion. Thanks largely to the Pax Americana, until recently, the world was more free, more fair, more safe, and more rich, for more people than at any time in human history. Somehow, it was Trump’s fault that the “rules-based order” was under threat even though it’s only existed to the extent that America and its allies have been able to intimidate predator nations from challenging it.
There was vast lamentation that the US-Israeli attacks on Iran’s war fighting capacity had not involved prior consultation and UN authorisation, notwithstanding the obvious: that aside from the enormities the theocracy has visited on its own people, any Iranian nuclear weapon would be a catastrophe for the whole world. In my blunt Aussie way, I tried to point out that the US president might be a narcissistic bully but was actually doing much more good than harm; and my sense was that our Indian hosts secretly agreed.
