The G20 Summit, held on September 9-10, 2023, represents a significantly historic moment for India to make meaningful contributions to the global discussions and resolutions on a gamut of pressing international issues. After 300 bilateral meetings, 200 hours of negotiations, and 15 drafts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his team were able to bring consensus on the Russia-Ukraine paragraphs in the final G20 communiqué. Finally, the G20 approved an 83-paragraph leaders’ declaration, covering issues ranging from plastic pollution to terrorism, underscoring India’s role and commitment to facilitating comprehensive and inclusive discussions on critical global issues.
The consensus appeared to be difficult in a diplomatic quagmire in the backdrop of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, particularly in the absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The summit, along with the simultaneous bilateral and plurilateral meetings, reflected India’s autonomous foreign policy stance and the nature of its relationships with key international actors. The declaration will have a definitive bearing on its bilateral relations with the US, Russia and China, its increasing global clout, being the voice of the Global South, and its efforts to effectuate a revived multilateralism.
G20: Background
The G20 was established in 1999, post-Asian financial crisis, to bring together both advanced and emerging economies to address international economic and financial issues and with the primary objective of fostering dialogue and cooperation among its member states. The G20 comprises a diverse mix of both developed and developing nations, representing a cross-section of the global economic landscape, which includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. The group represents approximately 85 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and two-thirds of the world’s population. The G20 leaders meet annually to discuss issues such as international trade, tax policy, development, and climate change, among others.
India’s Approach as announced by PM Modi
Prime Minister Modi has expressed confidence that the New Delhi G20 Summit will chart a new path in human-centric and inclusive development. He emphasised that India’s G20 Presidency has been inclusive, ambitious, decisive, and action-oriented where the developmental concerns of the Global South have been actively voiced. The overarching theme — One Earth, One Family, One Future — encapsulates India’s vision of fostering unity and equality, transcending the traditional distinctions between developed and developing nations.
Revival of North-South dialogue
India’s role as the host nation also provides a unique opportunity to represent the interests of the Global South on a global stage. It also empowers India to act as a leader and advocate for the priorities and concerns of countries in the developing world. ‘Global South’ is a term first coined by American writer and political activist, Carl Oglesby in 1969, often used to identify the regions of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania (the term does not refer to geographical south; for example, most of the Global South is geographically within the Northern Hemisphere). Global South denotes the “third world” and “periphery” marking the regions outside Europe and North America, mostly low-income and often politically or culturally marginalised countries, and are usually current or former subjects of colonialism. The Global South represents 39 per cent of the global GDP and 85 per cent of the global population.
Given the urgency of issues such as global warming, the ongoing Covid pandemic, and conflicts like the one in Ukraine, the G20 Summit has gained increasing significance as a vital platform for addressing these pressing challenges. India’s leadership during this summit can contribute to fostering international cooperation and finding solutions to these urgent global issues. Despite the divergence over Ukraine casting a possible shadow over the G20 Summit, India has ensured to walk the talk with its focus on raising concerns regarding issues which are globally more inclusive. It focused on issues of the Global South, e.g. food and fuel insecurity, rising inflation, debt and reforms of multilateral development banks etc.
In a bid to make the G20 more inclusive, PM Modi proposed the African Union to become a permanent member of the G20 and as a consequence, the AU was granted the same. The most pressing global challenges include climate change, poverty, development issues and debt crises, which, in differential degrees, impact the Global South. The global order and West-centric multilateral institutions fail to reflect on and address these realities. In an effort to correct these imbalances, India championed the concerns and aspirations of the Global South and put the region at the centre, during its G20 presidency.
At the very beginning of its presidency, India hosted the Voice of Global South Summit virtually, with representatives from 125 countries. India even ensured that the region remained centre stage at the G7 Summit held in Hiroshima, in May 2023.
India decodes a diplomatic high-wire
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping didn’t attend the summit and sent their respective representatives. India’s diplomatic position was complex given New Delhi’s historic ties with Moscow vis-a-vis its surging relationship with the West, and its outstanding boundary disputes with Beijing. India has relied on Russia for military equipment for decades (though it’s declining of late) and more recently, for record amounts of cheap crude oil. Despite India’s refusal to directly condemn Russia over the war, the West and its allies have courted India aggressively as they bank on it as a bulwark against China’s growing geo-political ambitions in the region and China’s attempt to create an alternative international balance of power which is essentially anti-West.
The Delhi-DC synergy started with US President Joe Biden giving PM Narendra Modi a red carpet welcome in Washington DC, in June 2023 wherein the two signed a slate of deals. The synergy was boosted by Joe Biden’s New Delhi visit during the G20 Summit. PM Modi’s formidable international clout can be seen when he was the guest of honour at France’s Bastille Day parade and was invited to attend the G7 summit in June 2023. And in this background, India has promoted itself not only as the leader of the Global South but as a rising global player and importantly, as a mediator between the West and Russia.
India’s emphasis on the Global South, during its G20 presidency, has coincided with the continued second year of the ongoing Russo-Ukraine conflict which has once again surfaced the schisms in perceptions between the Global North and the South, laying bare the longstanding underlying tension between the two economic blocks. Contrary to European expectations that most countries would rally against Russia, countries have adopted mixed positions towards the conflict based on a myriad of complex factors. Besides obvious realpolitik calculations, historical grievances towards European colonialism and the Global South’s lack of representation in important multilateral organisations has contributed to the bloc’s growing differences with Europe.
Since the beginning of the war, Europe has actively attempted to make India condemn Russia in clear terms. Meanwhile, an ever increasingly influential India, leading two important global presidencies — the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation — articulated its perspectives and highlighted the war’s disproportionate impact on the Global South through the crisis of the three F’s — food, fuel, fertilisers. In the backdrop of a highly polarised world regarding the Russo-Ukrainian conflagrations, India’s international power position has spared the G20 from being entirely hijacked by geo-political considerations (Europe’s attempt to ‘Ukrainise’ the G20) and instead focus on its foundational mandate of cooperation on economic and other co-related developmental challenges.
It almost stood impossible that the West would agree to a language sounding weaker than the one used in Bali (where Russian aggression was condemned) and Russia also indicated clearly not to agree to an agreement condemning it for ‘aggression’. However, the declaration did address the ‘human suffering and adverse repercussions of the conflict in Ukraine on global food and energy security’. The breakthrough could be reached only with a diplomatic broker with heavy international clout like India, as it has good relations both with Moscow and the West. Finally, the declaration used a language that not only satisfied Russia (Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the Delhi summit a milestone) but also gave the Western bloc enough to be content.
Euro-centrism revised
The Minister of External Affairs, Dr. S Jaishankar’s viral statement, “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems” has resonated not only within the Global South but within Europe itself. A shift from Euro-centric international priorities echoes when the German Chancellor, Scholz quotes Jaishankar at the 2023 Munich Security Conference. Resulting in striking self-reflection within Europe’s corridors of power, Jaishankar’s remarks drove home the point that Europe cannot expect support and solidarity while continuing to remain indifferent to the challenges of the Global South.
Similarly in March 2023, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell, after he attended this year’s Raisina Dialogue and the G20 Ministerial Meeting in New Delhi, wrote, “It was interesting to know about the way many of our non-Western partners around the world perceive today’s troubled times.” In Borrell’s own words, the conclusions he took back with him to Brussels involved taking the ambitions of India and the diverse Global South seriously, while acknowledging the region’s desire for its rightful seat at the multilateral table. And the Global South’s growing ‘…frustration that other issues do not receive the same urgency or resources’.
Indo-US ties deepening more than ever before
Joe Biden agreeing to drop a specific reference to Russian ‘aggression’ over Ukraine and the EU following suit exhibits a deeper Delhi-DC synergy which can also be seen in bilateral agreements between the two on multilateral development banks (MDBs), Washington DC’s acceptance of India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) as an exportable tech solution for financial inclusion collaboration in the Global Biofuels Alliance. The GE jet engine and MQ-9B deals are moving along towards finalisation. Under the initiative on critical and emerging technology (iCET), space, semiconductors, defence innovation, education, quantum physics, biotech and telecom collaboration are other areas of focus. All trade disputes between India and the US at WTO now stand resolved. Moreover, financial partnerships emerging in the domain of climate are coming too.
Reassurance of cordiality to Russia and India’s diplomatic autonomy
Russian FM Lavrov called the Delhi declaration a milestone success. Svetlana Lukash, the Russian G20 sherpa, or government negotiator said, “There were very difficult negotiations on the Ukraine issue; first of all, the collective position of the BRICS countries and partners worked, everything was reflected in a balanced form…”
The Delhi Declaration showcases its goodwill gesture for Russia as India worked as an international face-saver for the country. But still, India in a projection of its international autonomous position, accommodated criticisms of the Russian attack on Ukraine. India in its realpolitik calculations knows well a) Russia’s dwindling position in comprehensive national power, b) its dwindling military-industrial base and c) its dependence on Beijing. In a situation of a hostile neighbour like China, where Russia finds a dependent ally, India needs deeper connections with the West.
China couldn’t stand as lone block and international spoiler
India shares a fragile relationship with China. Xi Jinping’s decision to skip the summit shows China’s intolerance and disregard to the towering international position India is gaining. Chinese obstructionism was quite visible when it opposed many of the agendas. The modus operandi of China was to unsettle India diplomatically but New Delhi out-manoeuvred Beijing and brought it on board by creating a situation where China would either have to be the last one standing, resisting a common text or acceding to the common framework. With Moscow and the Global South in favour of India, Chinese obstructionism and resistance had to dilute and finally, it obviously chose not to become a spoiler.
The World Bank discussed its concerns on the outstanding debt of $62 billion to the poorest countries of which, two-thirds has been provided by China. It’s a clear example of ‘Chinese debt trap diplomacy’ or ‘predatory loans’, where a creditor country or institution extends debt to a borrowing nation partially, or solely, to increase the lender’s political leverage and when the debtor country becomes unable to meet its repayment obligations, it becomes a defaulter and the creditor country put its own conditionalities on the defaulter country. Yet, the West remained tight-lipped on the usage of the term in the deliberations.
The potentially deepening and consolidating Delhi-DC synergy is in tune with offsetting Chinese geopolitical gains in the contemporary world order.
India-Europe Infrastructure Corridor (India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor) is a new project and a part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment (PGII) — a West-led initiative for funding infrastructure projects, which can be viewed as a counterpart of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and G7’s effective alternative to BRI. An MoU was signed between India, the US, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, the UAE, France, Germany and Italy to establish the IMEE EC.
While global uncertainties are testing the world economy, India tops the list of 10 largest economies showing an annual GDP growth rate of 5.9 per cent, showing extraordinary resilience and scale-up strategy of growth. The G20 coincides with India’s stupendous achievements in space where the Indian flag is flying on the South pole of the Moon. Filled with national glory in economic growth and heightened achievements in Science and Technology and R&D, with the slogan of ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ and the G20 theme of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’, India serves to be the best navigator of international complexities in a multilateral world of conflicting national and geopolitical interests. The G20 shows how diplomacy can be done rather than how it has been done, so far.
The author is a senior faculty in the Department of History, ARSD College, University of Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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