AFTER eight years of planning and billions of dollars in spending, the Middle East’s first world’s fair opened on Friday in Dubai, with hopes that the months-long extravaganza will draw both visitors and global attention to this desert-turned-dreamscape.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed back Expo 2020 a year and could affect how many people flock to the United Arab Emirates. But the six-month-long exhibition still offers Dubai a momentous opportunity to showcase its unique East-meets-West appeal as a place where all are welcome for business.

Not long ago, the site of the 1,080 acre (438 hectare) Expo was barren desert. Now, it’s a futuristic landscape buzzing with robots that dance and bark automated orders at bare-faced visitors to mask up, a new metro station, multi-million dollar pavilions and so-called districts with names like “sustainability” and “opportunity” — all built, like much of the Gulf, by low-paid migrant workers.

More than 190 nations are using their pavilions to spotlight their greatest tourist attractions, discoveries and ambitions.

The world will see the culture of India, Ayodhya and Ram temple will also be displayed in Dubai Expo. India is also participating this year in Dubai Expo 2020, the world’s premier exhibition venue for six months and will showcase yoga along with the ghats of Ayodhya, Ram Mandir, Varanasi.

Announcing this, Commerce Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam said that India’s permanent pavilion for the Dubai Expo, which will run from October 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022, has been completed. It is a four-storey building and has an open theater in front of it.

The US pavilion, paid for by the UAE after America struggled to come up with funding, boasts a replica of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket and takes visitors on a conveyor belt past multimedia infomercials for American inventions. It also displays a Quran that belonged to the nation’s third President, Thomas Jefferson, as an example of how religious freedom “is woven into the very fabric of American society.”

China’s vast, lantern-shaped pavilion focuses on the nation’s space ambitions and future invention plans, featuring a Transformer-like car that SAIC Motor hopes will function one day also as a submarine and helicopter. Other attractions include an African food hall, a royal Egyptian mummy, concerts and performances from around the world, and the option to dine on a $500 three-course meal with glow-in-the-dark cuisine.

Since first making a splash in London in 1851, world fairs have long served as an opportunity for nations to meet, exchange ideas, showcase inventions, promote culture and build business ties.

For more than a century, these global exhibitions have captured the imagination and showcased some of humanity’s most important innovations. The first world’s fair held in the United States in 1876 debuted Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, the typewriter, a mechanical calculator and Heinz Ketchup. One of its main buildings, Memorial Hall, is now a museum.

Dubai’s ruler and the force behind the emirate’s transformation, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, described Expo 2020 as a chance to showcase the best of human excellence.

India, UAE free trade pact holds huge potential to boost trade, investment, says Goyal: THE proposed free trade agreement between India and the UAE holds huge potential for both the countries to boost trade and investment and the investors here are “very” positive about doing business in New Delhi, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said on Friday.