Every January, as the world shivers under winter and ordinary citizens worry about rent, jobs, fuel prices, and whether their children will have a future worth inhabiting, a peculiar pilgrimage takes place. It is not to Mecca, not to Rome, not to any shrine of moral authority or democratic legitimacy. No — the modern-day high priests of power climb instead to a sanitized, snow-glittering resort in the Swiss Alps called Davos.

There, in the rarefied air, far above the oxygen of common people and the noise of democratic dissent, the self-anointed “Masters of the Universe” gather under the grand banner of the World Economic Forum (WEF). They arrive in private jets that leave carbon footprints larger than entire villages, cloaked in the language of sustainability, inclusivity, and “stakeholder capitalism.” They sip artisanal coffee while lecturing the world about austerity. They dine on organic, ethically sourced delicacies while millions starve. They speak of climate change while their corporations continue to ravage forests, oceans, and livelihoods.

And we are told — with a straight face — that this is “progress.”

But let us be clear: the WEF is not the United Nations. It is not the World Health Organization. It is not the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or the World Trade Organization. It is not an institution born of treaties, diplomacy, or democratic consent. No flag flies for it in the General Assembly. No elected parliament oversees it. No global citizen has ever voted for it.

The WEF is, in essence, a private club — a velvet-rope empire dressed up as a global conscience. It is a boutique of power where billionaires, CEOs, financiers, and pliant politicians mingle like aristocrats at a masquerade ball, pretending to care about inequality while luxuriating in it.

This is the great paradox — or rather, the great hypocrisy — of our time.

Once upon a time, the architecture of global governance was imperfect but principled. The UN, for all its flaws, was at least an attempt at multilateralism — a world where nations, big and small, had a seat at the table. UNESCO was meant to preserve culture and knowledge, not patent it for private profit. The WHO was meant to protect public health, not negotiate with pharmaceutical cartels. The IMF and World Bank, for all their controversial policies, were still institutions accountable — at least in theory — to sovereign governments.

But over the decades, something insidious has happened.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the official international order has been hollowed out, sidelined, and overshadowed by a private congregation of wealth called Davos. The WEF has crept into the corridors of global decision-making like a shadow government — not elected, not mandated, not transparent, yet somehow more influential than bodies that represent billions of people.

This is what they euphemistically call the “New Normal.”

But in truth, it is nothing of the sort.

It is a new abnormal.

It is a world where public institutions grow weaker while private power grows stronger. Where democracies are theatrical performances, and real decisions are made behind closed doors by men and women who answer to shareholders, not citizens. Where elections are held, but economic destinies are scripted in boardrooms. Where leaders speak of “people’s mandate” while secretly aligning themselves with the mandate of the market.

Abraham Lincoln once defined democracy as “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” In the age of Davos, that sacred ideal has been grotesquely mutated into something far darker:

A world of the one percent, by the one percent, and for the one percent.

This tiny elite — a gilded caste that controls finance, technology, media, and increasingly politics — has wrapped the globe in a velvet vise. They preach meritocracy while inheriting fortunes. They sermonize about innovation while crushing small competitors. They talk about freedom while lobbying for regulations that protect monopolies. They celebrate globalization while hiding their wealth in tax havens.

And the rest of humanity? We are treated as mere instruments — cogs in a machine of profit extraction. Consumers to be manipulated. Workers to be exploited. Voters to be distracted. Citizens to be pacified with slogans while substantive power slips further out of reach.

In this world, even suffering becomes a commodity. Poverty is an “opportunity market.” Climate catastrophe is an “investment frontier.” War is not tragedy — it is “geopolitical risk.” Human misery is a spreadsheet entry, a line graph, a quarterly report.

The irony is almost too bitter to swallow: those who caused much of the planet’s devastation now gather in luxury to lecture the world about saving it.

One cannot help but sense the ghost of a grotesque moral decay lurking beneath the polished rhetoric of Davos — a culture of entitlement so extreme that it resembles, in its arrogance and impunity, the predatory elites that history has rightly condemned. A system that breeds not just inequality, but an ethos of domination, where power becomes cruelty, wealth becomes worship, and human beings become disposable.

This is why the world feels increasingly like a gilded prison — shiny on the outside, suffocating within.

But it does not have to be this way.

If there is to be any hope for the planet — ecological, social, or moral — the stranglehold of private money over public life must be broken. Global governance must return to institutions that are accountable to nations and citizens, not to billionaires and boardrooms. Decision-making must be democratized, not outsourced to elite conclaves in alpine resorts.

The climate crisis, inequality, technological disruption, and geopolitical instability are too serious to be left in the hands of a self-selecting oligarchy that has proven, time and again, that it prioritizes profit over people.

Davos must no longer be the altar before which the world bows.

The future must belong not to the one percent, but to the many.

Not to private wealth, but to public will.

Not to corporate tyranny, but to democratic dignity.

Until that happens, the “World Economic Forum” will remain what it truly is — a glittering theatre of power, a masquerade of morality, and a monument to the betrayal of the very ideals it pretends to uphold.

-Mahesh Zagade