The G-20 Opportunity for India

India is the host country for this year’s G-20 Summit, which will convene on 8 and 9 September in New Delhi. India took over the presidency from Indonesia on 1 December 2022 and will serve in that capacity till 30 November 2023. The next host country will be Brazil. Having three major developing countries leading the G-20 in succession is a significant opportunity for focusing the international economic agenda on the concerns and interests of the large constituency of developing countries, which are now acquiring a new identity as the Global South. This has yet to crystallise and become a coherent grouping but the concept itself has taken hold. India did well to convene a summit of the Global South in January this year, seeking its inputs for the forthcoming summit. While only 18 countries were represented by their Heads of State/Government, 125 countries took part in the digital event. This positions India as representing the interests of developing countries. This role has been reinforced by India’s proposal to Include the African Union as a G-20 member or at least as a permanent invitee. If Brazil takes this forward, then there is a good chance for the Global South to emerge as an important player on the global stage. This will not be the resurrection of the Non-Aligned Movement, whose members were both politically and economically relatively weak. The Global South, by contrast, will have several major economies and regional powers, such as India from Asia, South Africa and Nigeria from Africa and Brazil and Argentina from Latin America. If India is able to use its G-20 presidency to give shape to the concept and infuse it with a distinct personality, that will be a significant development, offering India a leadership role in an emerging and influential new political and economic constellation. A Centre for the Global South has been set up to serve as a think tank for the potential grouping.

While the G-20 summit will take place in September, India has been playing host to a number of ministerial and official meetings. The G-20 has 2 tracks-one is the Sherpa track, where personal representatives of leaders meet to draw up the summit agenda and schedule of meetings and work on the summit communique. The other is the ministerial track where ministers and officials meet to discuss and finalise the summit documents on various agenda items, of which the meetings of the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, are the most important. This harks back to the original mandate of the G-20 to serve as the ‘premier forum for international economic cooperation’ which ‘plays an important role in shaping and strengthening global architecture and governance on all major international economic issues’. Over the years, the G-20 agenda has expanded beyond economic governance issues to include trade, public health, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), Climate Change, Anti-Corruption and Technology and even Tourism. Even though political issues are not part of the summit agenda, they inevitably creep in. Terrorism is now a regular topic for discussions and currently, the Ukraine War has cast a dark shadow over the G-20. However, the greater majority of working groups focus on issues of public health, environment and labour, among others. India has been hard at work convening meetings on all the usual agenda items. In the run-up to the summit, over 200 working groups will have met. There have been three ministerial-level meetings and two Sherpa-level meetings already. This is more than double such meetings held under the Indonesian presidency. The outcome documents of the Bali summit ran to over a thousand pages. One should expect an even more voluminous amount of articles generated by the New Delhi summit. One wonders how much of this will be translated into concrete implementation. It is easy to mobilise efforts to convene a high-profile and impressive event. However, events do not mean much unless they are followed up by a well-conceived and efficient process of follow-up. The tendency is to move from one event to another and one high-level visit to another without implementing decisions or plans announced at these events. India will be putting up an impressive, even spectacular, show around the summit. We have seen how even the preparatory meetings have become occasions for a colourful display of India’s rich cultural heritage. These meetings have been held in different cities of India, which have been spruced up for the occasion. New Delhi will be playing host to some of the most powerful world leaders and this will put India and its political leadership right at the centre of global attention. Perhaps some political capital would have been gained by the government and may be useful in the forthcoming general elections scheduled to be held next year. Will this have a bearing on the summit outcome? One doubts that very much.

One may argue that the G-20 summit has provided an opportunity to bring this important event into the various cities of India raising the public awareness of international affairs and India’s role on the global stage. Prime Minister Modi has said:

The G-20 is a unique opportunity to showcase to the world that India is not just confined to Delhi but includes every state and Union Territory.

This is innovative. The exposure of foreign guests to India’s plural culture adds to the country’s soft power. But ultimately, the success or failure of the summit will rest on substantive decisions taken on key issues of macro-economic management, advancing international cooperation on a whole series of global and cross-cutting issues, in particular, finance and development, public health and climate change. The G-20 did not play much of a role in dealing with the recent Covid pandemic. We were instead treated to a discouraging display of vaccine nationalism. The mounting debt burden which several developing countries are grappling with, has only been dealt with partially. If India is to make a substantive contribution at the summit, then it must have practical recommendations to offer on some of these pressing challenges.

The theme chosen for the Delhi summit is: ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’.

In one sense it is a well-chosen theme reflecting the compelling truth that we live in a densely interconnected world and our destinies as humanity are intimately interlinked. The salience of global, transnational, cross-cutting and cross-domain challenges has dramatically increased. These are challenges that are no longer amenable to national or even regional solutions. The recent Covid pandemic is a good example. The virus did not recognise any national or regional boundaries. It was apparent to everyone that no one would be safe unless all were safe. And yet we ended up with a highly skewed distribution of vaccines. In some countries, people were able to get multiple doses of the vaccine. In Africa, the vaccination rate was only 6% of the population. This means that even though currently there may be a remission, there is every likelihood of infections surging again. Should not the G-20 recognise this danger and mobilise the most powerful countries of the world to devise a more inclusive and more efficient distribution of vaccines? India is one of the significant producers of vaccines. It can contribute to any global effort in this regard, bringing its own capacities to the table. India is already a part of a vaccine initiative as part of the ‘Quad’. Could this be extended into a G-20 initiative perhaps jointly by the four partners?

Climate Change and Biodiversity are even more urgent challenges. We have seen a series of unusual climate events this year. Several parts of the world are experiencing heat waves and others are suffering from a wave of forest fires. Ocean temperatures are at an all-time high endangering the delicate food chains in the ocean space. The dumping of hazardous plastic waste and other toxic materials is reducing the role oceans play in moderating global warming. The Antarctic ice is melting at a faster rate. There is by now ample and compelling evidence that we may have crossed the tipping point in global warming. And yet the sense of urgency to take action to avoid catastrophic and irreversible changes is missing. The time for incremental change is gone. We need to take drastic action to prevent further damage to the fragile life-sustaining ecosystem from being overwhelmed by climate change. This must be high on the G-20 agenda. India has proposed its LiFE (Lifestyle for the Environment) initiative, seeking to bring about behavioural changes at the societal level, so that we live ecologically sustainable lives. The concept incorporates the idea of a circular, zero waste economy, with a conscious effort to Reduce, Re-use and Recycle. One hopes that the G-20 summit will embrace this initiative and engage in global collaboration to advance it. India has done well to deliver on its climate change commitments and this gives it credibility to promote LiFE at the summit.

There are several cross-domain issues that need to be addressed taking into account the feedback loops which tie them together. In this respect, advancing the SDG is critical because this is the first time that the cross-domain nature of the challenges which confront us, have been explicitly spelt out. For example, energy, water and health security are interlinked and intervention in one domain may positively or negatively impact interventions in another domain. For example, food security may involve using large volumes of water to grow crops, but clean water is also required for healthy living. Food security may demand the expanded use of chemical fertilisers and toxic pesticides. But these have an adverse impact on the health of our farmers who must use contaminated water for drinking and suffer prolonged exposure to toxic chemicals. Thus, pursuit of food security leads to acute health problems among them. Farmers get bankrupted not so much because of crop failure but due to prohibitive health costs. In a similar fashion, most cooking in rural areas, not only in India but in other developing countries as well, is based on burning biomass. Indoor air pollution from the burning of biomass leads to respiratory problems both among women and children. This undermines health security. These interlinkages need to be made explicit so that ecologically sustainable practices are adopted in agriculture. This is particularly important to developing countries. This is another area where India could play a lead role, sharing its own experiences and promoting alternative strategies for simultaneously achieving energy, food and health security.

It is acknowledged that any credible strategy to tackle climate change would involve energy transition, that is, moving away progressively from fossil fuels to renewable and clean sources of energy. The transition is risky because it is a phase in which both fossil fuels and renewables must traverse parallel tracks. We have seen how in the wake of the Ukraine War, energy security was badly compromised due to disruptions in the world energy markets. Several countries went back to fossil fuel use, including in Europe. Ensuring energy security requires that countries settle for a more graduated switch to renewables. The G-20 should acknowledge the fragility of the energy shift and chart a realistic energy transition. One should not have to face a situation where a rich country like Germany virtually cornered gas supplies from the Gulf to the detriment of several advanced and developing economies. The G-20 should adopt some norms in this regard so that we do not end up with ‘energy nationalism’ like the vaccine nationalism we witnessed during the pandemic and the subsequent disruption in energy supply chains in the wake of the Ukraine War.

G-20 is billed as the premier forum for international economic cooperation. However, over the years, political and security issues have become part of the deliberations and this is not surprising. When the leaders of the most powerful countries are gathered in one place it is inevitable that non-economic issues will form part of their deliberations. The most significant threat to international peace and security at present is the Ukraine War and has had adverse consequences for the global economy. We saw how energy security has been impacted by the war. The situation is complicated by the fact that it is one of the G-20 members, Russia, that is guilty of aggression against another sovereign and independent country. The War has polarised the world and heightened tensions between the USA and Western Europe on the one hand and Russia and China on the other. This polarisation is reflected in the deliberations of several working group meetings. There is also an upsurge of narrow nationalism across the world precisely at a time when most challenges which confront us demand international solidarity and a sense of common humanity. Multilateral institutions and multilateral processes require global collaboration but they are particularly weak at this juncture. They need to be revived and rejuvenated but it is difficult to see the most powerful members of the G-20 taking the lead in this respect. The confrontation between the USA and China is getting sharper by the day so they will not be able to take the lead in preventing further polarisation and insulate at least some key areas for collaboration. Climate change is certainly one such area. Could India as G-20 president, play a role in bridging some of the yawning gaps between the major players and enable a focus on the crisis situation facing several developing countries? One does not know whether, in the large number of preparatory meetings leading up to the summit, India has been engaged in active, if discreet diplomacy, to ensure substantive outcomes in at least some areas. These outcomes cannot be conjured up at the summit itself. They require intensive diplomacy, stretching over several months, leading up to the main event. We know that continuous efforts are being made to ensure a consensus communique and outcome document, but it appears that in Ukraine there may not be agreed language in the communique. We could end up with a Chairman’s Summary accompanied by a communique with language agreed on other less contentious issues. This would be a retreat from the Bali communique which had agreed language even on the Ukraine War. This was seen as a great achievement for the host country, Indonesia. India may not be able to match this as Russia is now less accommodating and China has made it known that it will go along with whatever Russia is willing to accept. There is little doubt that efforts will continue to be made right up to the eleventh hour to get a consensus communique but the prospects look weak.

Whether a consensus is achieved or not, the G-20 summit will be something of a coming-out party for India reflecting its enhanced international status. The Prime Minister will be seen rubbing shoulders with some of most powerful world leaders though Russian President Putin himself is not likely to attend. It is the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov who is likely to represent him at the summit. If the Chinese President Xi Jinping comes to Delhi for the summit this will be plus from India’s point of view. There have been Chinese commentaries suggesting that Xi should attend virtually rather than in person. There has been some unhappiness that India as host of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit this year in July, had dispensed with an in-person summit and opted for a virtual one at the last moment. This was seen as India devaluing the SCO which was initiated by China. It is likely that Xi will travel to South Africa for the summit of leaders of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) scheduled to be convened on 22–23 August. Prime Minister Modi will also be there. It is possible that he will meet the Chinese leader and invite him to the G-20 summit in person. Both the BRICS summit and the subsequent G-20 summit will see Prime Minister Modi as a much sought-after international leader. This will, no doubt, improve his domestic standing and chances of success in the general elections next year.

There is no doubt that the G-20 summit will train international attention on India and its stature will be enhanced. This is in terms of what may be called ‘optical success’. But this will be ephemeral. What about substantive outcomes?

The Ukraine War being a major preoccupation, how the issue is handled at the summit will be a test for Indian diplomacy. If India succeeds in getting agreed language in the communique that will be a significant achievement.

The recovery of the global economy and international trade is another key agenda item. India would gain if there is a renewed commitment to free trade and to reversing the competitive protectionism that appears to have taken hold. India’s economic success is tied to a more benign and accommodating international economic environment. Halting and reversing the current trend towards protectionism should be a priority.

The summit needs to address the growing indebtedness of several low-income countries. If unaddressed, this could become another drag on the global economy. The limited measures taken so far need to be significantly expanded.

The summit is taking place at a time when the Climate crisis is already sweeping across the world, with unprecedented heat waves, heavy rain and flooding. A clear and unequivocal commitment to implementing the Paris Climate Change Agreement in all its dimensions, in particular climate finance, would enhance the credibility of the G-20.

The danger of another pandemic is not yet past us. The G-20 summit must put in place global collaborative measures to prepare for a public health crisis, including an early warning system; and the summit will be an excellent opportunity to further crystallise the emerging constituency of the Global South and create an opportunity for India’s leadership. Progress on these substantive issues will determine the success or failure of the summit and India’s presidency.