From Alpha Century to Viral World: The Raisina Young Fellows Speak

The Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and ZEIT-Stiftung are delighted to publish this compilation of essays titled, From Alpha Century to Viral World: The Raisina Young Fellows Speak. This is a result of the intellectual generosity of and contributions by the Raisina Young Fellows, class of 2020. They joined us from across the globe in January last year for a ten-day policy workshop in New Delhi, participated at the Raisina Dialogue, and became part of our Young Fellows community at a time when the world was still oblivious to the pandemic that was already upon it. This collection of essays has been scripted by the contributors while battling the COVID-19 pandemic, even as we were all grappling with its implications on our personal and professional lives and reconfiguring our future passions and future pursuits. This volume is motivated by the theme of Raisina Dialogue 2020, “Alpha Century”, and, in some ways, bookends the upcoming Raisina Dialogue 2021, titled, “#ViralWorld”. These thought-provoking 17 essays compel us to engage with four important spheres of our existence that seek urgent inquiry and dialogue—climate and sustainability, the new world order, democracy and pluralism, and technology and digital societies. With its wide scope, this publication puts forth ideas and themes that would be central to the post-pandemic era. From the future of liberalism and democracy to the insidious and increasingly overwhelming presence of technology in our daily lives, these thought pieces were written by young leaders of today, and they provoke us to appreciate that these disruptions implicate and announce the demise of the extant international order and signal the urgent need for a novel format of multistakeholderism and, indeed, multilateralism. These essays look beyond the rhetoric, the popular trends and hashtags, and help agitate ideas that allow us to re-invest in a world that works for all—across politics, sustainability and international relations. As part of the Raisina Young Fellows 2020 programme, the Dean and Chair, Dr Shashi Tharoor and Dr Samir Saran, had presented and released their co-authored book, titled, The New World Disorder and the Indian Imperative, motivated by the ten years of discussions and debates hosted at this programme. The book had highlighted the extent of the disorder and the failure of the global international system to detect, respond, and manage multiple crises since its establishment post the Second World War. COVID-19 was to brutally corroborate many of the conclusions of the book by exposing the incapacity of the world to respond to the pandemic, the weaponisation of global trade, the selfish and perverse hunt for medical devices and solutions, and, indeed, more recently vaccine nationalism. Most importantly, it told us the story of the incapability of the international system to hold bad actors to account. The current state of affairs and its early resolution is not just an “Indian imperative”, as the book suggests, we require a new global imperative and universal ambition to find solutions to the formidable challenges and planet-wide inadequacies that confront humankind.