Raisina Dialogue 2026

The global compact that supported the postwar order is fraying. The institutions that gave it life – the UN, the WTO — are struggling to serve a multipolar world. In this vacuum, agility replaces architecture. The world is being rewired — through mineral corridors, maritime linkages, and digital highways. South-South solidarities and new plurilateralisms are displacing old frameworks, creating flexible, interest-driven coalitions to shape global governance where consensus has stalled.

This pillar examines the connective tissue of the emerging order. India’s recalibration — from BRICS to IMEC to the UFI trilateral — underscores a new strategic grammar. The Global South is no longer a constituency, it is a coalition, a force multiplier for a fairer order. In this fluid landscape, India is not a balancing but a builder, creating new structures for leadership, resilience, and shared growth.

In a world diverting resources to security from solidarity, how can development aspirations be met? As 2030 draws ever nearer, ambition must give way to accountability. The Sustainable Development Goals, set in 2015, are facing a crisis. Progress has stalled, funding fatigue is visible, and planetary limits are closing in. The question now is not what was promised, but what can still be delivered.

This pillar asks what will take to recentre development in the global order. Can technology bridge gaps that politics has widened? What does gender equity mean in a digital, postpandemic economy? What do the world’s young demand beyond rhetoric? Most importantly, can development survive in a world defined by division and self-absorption? If not, what must a post-SDG compact look like — one grounded in realism, reciprocity, and responsibility?

Across the world, nations are moving from pledges to action and accountability. Countries are putting into place the institutional systemic changes needed to finance and withstand the shock the future may bring. Green finance and investment are moving across borders, but not at the rate needed; governments, despite the uncertainty, are seeking to ensure that the supply chains that determine future prosperity are safeguarded.

In the absence of a worldwide consensus, emerging economies, on the frontline of the transition, must perforce assume leadership. They seek to design resilience, reduce harm, and adapt to what is already inevitable. The challenge is both moral and material: to replace apathy with agency, to turn the cost of delay into a call for action.

Power today flows through the lines of an algorithm. Code defines identity, data dictates geopolitics, and AI shapes the wealth of nations. Technology is fast outpacing the ability of states to regulate it. We already know technology will shape us – but will we have a chance to shape technology first?

This pillar explores the evolving architecture of digital governance — the clash of regimes, the race for innovation, and the ethics of autonomy. Technology is redefining truth, work, and even personhood. The world must craft oversight that is agile yet anchored, inclusive yet secure. Progress may never be slowed, but it might still be steered to ensure that the machine serves humanity and not the other way around.

Electorates everywhere have demanded sovereignty over their economies. In response, nations are moderating their commitment to globalisation, recommitting to industrial policy, and asserting their right to self-reliance. Yet what could merely be fragmentation has also brought forth innovation. Nations are diversifying their partnerships and rethinking value creation beyond the traditional hierarchies. Constraint is breeding creativity.

This pillar studies the evolving map of global commerce. The old hierarchies of trade are dissolving, replaced by dynamic partnerships that balance competition with cooperation, sovereignty with interdependence, self-reliance and shared growth. Progress, as ever, is born not in ease but in effort — not despite adversity, but because of it.