Mohali/Chandigarh, September 20
Former Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting and Chandigarh MP Manish Tewari, while addressing the students at the Indian School of Business (ISB) Leadership Summit 2026 at the ISB, Mohali Campus, spoke about the rapidly evolving global order, shifting geopolitical equations and the strategic uncertainties confronting the world. Tewari, who was the keynote speaker, reflected on the larger questions of statecraft, global power and India’s place in an increasingly complex and changing international landscape. He also discussed the challenges and opportunities arising from these transformations and the implications they hold for India’s strategic outlook.
In his address, Tewari said, “Between 2019 and 2026, the world has changed spectacularly. And that is the reason that impelled me to write my latest book, which is called ‘The World Adrift’. As students of business, you cannot divorce yourself from the larger geopolitical construct which essentially characterizes not only our daily work life but more importantly, our very existence as a civilization.” He further said, “Unfortunately, in the fourth industrial revolution technologies, we have not been able to really find our feet. And the reason is not because we don’t have talent, not because we don’t have the capacity to build capacity, but because we are not putting capital behind it.”
Tewari also said that the current AI build-out which is happening in the United States of America is perhaps the most important infrastructure project after the construction of the railways in the Gilded Age in the US. “And you have those concurrent build-outs happening in China also – semiconductors, data centers, capacity building,” he added, while emphasising that India has to punch to its feet, if India has to be that emerging great arm that all of us would want our nation to be.
Tewari said the time has come to put our money where our mouth is and that this requires multi-partisanship. “Without it, in these polarized times, the grand project of taking India to the next level of development will remain not only a challenge but a mirage. India needs a movement akin to 1991, when Prime Minister and his Finance Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, who later became Prime Minister, forged a multi-party consensus on the country’s economic trajectory.”
Continuing his speech, Tewari said, “A consensus which has held the field between 1991 and 2026 across different administrations. And that is what helped unlock the creative spirits or the animal spirits of the Indian economy and allowed it to grow. And as a consequence, the benefits went to a very large number of people who we were able to lift to economic betterment. The reason why I am flagging this to you for your consideration is that tomorrow many of you will be or perhaps already are in policy planning roles.”
Tewari told the students that you do keep it at the back of your mind that, in whatever way you can contribute to ensuring that on certain agreed principles of how India needs to get to the next level of economic development, there has to be a multi-party consensus and the push for that is not going to come from the top. “You are inheriting a world far more challenging than what I inherited when I finished law school 45 years back. And as someone or as people who are going to be going out and trying to find your feet in this very complex and fast-changing world, do keep it in mind that the way forward for India is that the push has to come from young Indians, from people in corporate India, that you need to, we as a country need to sort out the stuff and see as to how we can do better for those people who repose their confidence and trust in us,” concluded Tewari.
During the summit, Tewari also participated in an engaging conversation on his book, ‘A World Adrift: A Parliamentarian’s Perspective on Global Power Dynamics’. Meanwhile, Tewari also said that it was a privilege to engage with the intellectually vibrant community at ISB and exchange perspectives with an audience deeply interested in leadership, public policy and the forces shaping the contemporary world. “ISB is a brilliant school and it has been doing phenomenally and exceptionally well. It is an integral part of my life because it falls in the Anandpur Sahib parliamentary constituency that I represented between 2019 and 2024,” said Tewari.