The interpreter of a changing world,Fareed Zakaria is Express Adda guest today

The Adda is a series of conversations with people at the centre of change,and has earlier hosted Financial Times commentator Martin Wolf,New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman,actors Shah Rukh Khan and Vidya Balan,and politician Arun Jaitley. Zakaria will be in conversation with Shekhar Gupta,Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express and Contributing Editor C Raja Mohan.

Long before the Arab Spring,in his 2003 book The Future of Freedom,Zakaria had diagnosed the problems of “illiberal democracy”,which implement electoral mechanisms without fundamental safeguards for freedom,unlike “liberal” Western democracies where universal suffrage followed liberal constitutionalism and the rule of law,making the vote count.

Zakaria’s analysis is remarkably insightful in understanding the democratisation of the Arab world and the Arab Spring. In a Newsweek cover called ‘Why They Hate US’ after 9/11,Zakaria had claimed that a more open Arab society would generate the dynamism needed to modernise Islam.

With his book The Post-American World (2008),Zakaria came to the forefront of defining the world we inhabit now. America is in political decline and its global role is shrinking. The “rise of the rest”,in other words,the growth of China,India,Brazil,etc,is the narrative that will shape the future. In an expanded and updated edition following the 2008 financial crisis,Zakaria argues the US needs to abandon its assumptions about its dominant role and instead become an honest global broker.

Born in Mumbai in 1964,Zakaria received his doctorate from Harvard University,where he was taught by the late Samuel P Huntington. In 2010,the government of India had honoured Zakaria with the Padma Bhushan for his contribution to journalism.

Counted among the 100 top public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy and Prospect in 2007,Zakaria is respected,read and heard because of his celebrated refusal to be pigeonholed into an ideological position,and his willingness to change his theories in the light of facts,as he did over the Iraq war,which he had initially supported but later came to criticise.

Fareed Zakaria GPS,Zakaria’s foreign affairs programme on CNN,conducts interviews with newsmakers,world leaders and experts and provides comprehensive analyses of events around the world.

Last December,Fareed Zakaria GPS focused on deteriorating global perceptions of India. Has India become the “broken BRIC”,with its growth dipping below 7 per cent and the rupee struggling as the worst-performing Asian currency? India’s private sector remains the most dynamic among the emerging markets,but it has a government that “simply doesn’t work”,he said. If New Delhi doesn’t get its act together,the “I” in BRIC might come to stand for Indonesia.

At the Express Adda,Zakaria can be expected to explain and offer his insights into all these essential and existential questions before India and the world.