Monthly Archives: September 2023

India, international affairs

The New Suez Moment? India’s G20 and the Tectonic Transition

The world moulded by the Delhi Summit will be one of people-focused principles, and agile, trust-based partnerships

It has been 14 years since the world’s leaders met at Pittsburgh and declared that the G20 was the world’s “premier forum for international economic co-operation”. In all these years, the G20 has broadened its horizons and extended its mandate, but it has never, till India’s presidency, offered a new vision for multilateral economic governance. This is not surprising. The Pittsburgh Summit, held in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis, had a single-minded focus on saving a financial system distant from the streets of Mumbai or Mombasa. An organisation built for crisis management could not be expected to advance a wholly new vision for global governance.

The Pittsburgh Summit, held in the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis, had a single-minded focus on saving a financial system distant from the streets of Mumbai or Mombasa.

In recent years, the G20 has been a lukewarm affair with political leaders largely being relegated to talking heads. Since February 2022, there has been a real risk that the G20 agenda would, given its crisis management lineage, attempt to become a forum for addressing the war in Ukraine. The New Delhi Summit has not only course-corrected, but it has also given this group a new lease of life. The “bankers’ G20” has been replaced, now and forever, with a “people’s G20”.

India’s achievement in producing a consensus, and a communiqué, has rightly been hailed. The G20 may not be a politico-security forum, but as all the meetings preceding the leaders’ summit demonstrated, there was no getting around Ukraine. New Delhi and Prime Minister Modi were up to the task. The United Nations Security Council, with only five vetoes, has failed to simply reaffirm the basic values of the UN Charter. But with India’s stewardship, the G20—a body with 20 vetoes, not one—was nudged into reminding us that “all states must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state”.

The United Nations Security Council, with only five vetoes, has failed to simply reaffirm the basic values of the UN Charter.

But what is even more important than India’s ability to deliver a consensus is that India’s G20 has humanised global governance. From climate finance to women-led development, India has taken up issues that so many struggle with and championed their solutions. In an era where populism has been simply wished away as a residual by-product of elite globalisation, India has used that same channel of multilateral cooperation to try and help the world’s underserved.

Partners in democracy: The US and India

India’s leadership, and the new direction it has given the G20, should come as no surprise. The world of 2023 is vastly different from the one in 2009. And India’s ascent to global deal-making has implications for the other great powers of the world: The United States (US), China, and India’s emerging-economy peers.

The Pittsburgh Summit was hosted by the world’s only superpower. Since then, a generation has passed. Attitudes have darkened. The superpower that, with such enviable confidence, steered the Pittsburgh agenda has turned its back on internationalism. It has raised gates to trade and walls against immigrants, and it now forces its money and energy to stay home rather than travel the world.

The superpower that, with such enviable confidence, steered the Pittsburgh agenda has turned its back on internationalism.

But the global system abhors a vacuum, whether of leadership or ideas. Time fashions its own alternatives. And, so, another vast democracy has risen to shoulder responsibility. As Capitol Hill recedes, Raisina Hill has stepped in. To be sure, it seems the US is shepherding India’s rise.

It is the rare succession in power in which its new wielder is welcomed by those who came before. But India’s vision for a renewed multilateralism is one that is welcomed by the US, for it is in America’s own interest as well. The tango amongst democracies was visible to all at the G20 Summit in Delhi. President Biden made it a point to be standing next to Prime Minister Modi at any and every opportunity.

It is easy to see why. Trump’s assault on multilateralism offended the US’ oldest allies in Europe; his open contempt alienated the developing world. The US, still reeling from those four years, has been flailing to reach out to powers old and new. It appears now to have found a way.

The US will find it useful to work with India not just on new, 21st-century issues, but to manage some of its 20th-century relationships that have become more tenuous today.

This is, indeed, a Suez Moment. As, in 1956, an older power found it needed a newer one to make a difference in the world, the US today has understood that certain geographies and actors require that India play a leading role. In that sense, the Delhi Declaration presaged a tectonic transition in global affairs. Biden, at least, has concluded that India’s leadership is good for America. This will not be hard to sell back home. Some progressives in his party might carp, but India enjoys a wide spectrum of support in US politics.

The US will find it useful to work with India not just on new, 21st-century issues, but to manage some of its 20th-century relationships that have become more tenuous today. Its relationship with Saudi Arabia is an excellent example; India plays a bridging role, allowing for new agreements on infrastructure and connectivity. And India’s presence in the room allows the US, Brazil, and South Africa to have a conversation among friends.

Joe Biden is proving he can put into practice ideas from Barack Obama’s presidency that had remained merely slogans. The US is, indeed, “leading from behind” under Biden. Ten years ago, that phrase might have sounded patronising or might have been a façade for the exercise of imperial power. But today, as the world has changed, it is a real formula for effective international relations.

India’s G20 presidency: Development for all

India’s formula for multilateralism has been welcomed by emerging economies from Brazil to Egypt to South Africa. They recognise that India can be trusted to steer the ship of multilateralism in the direction of their priorities. India’s leadership is not built on solitary, hoarded power. Nor is it the sort that Delhi demonstrated in the 1950s, while navigating between two brooding superpowers. Some thought the ‘Trump slump’ in multilateralism and America’s turn inwards would doom international cooperation. Instead, the sheer volume of cooperative activity has skyrocketed, albeit of a different nature from traditional multilateralism, and with novel arrangements.

India’s formula for multilateralism has been welcomed by emerging economies from Brazil to Egypt to South Africa.

The framework that time has fashioned and India has embraced is one that relies neither on the caprices of America nor on vassalage to China. It consists of multiple informal, mutually beneficial, and purpose-driven partnerships, built on agreements between sovereign governments that are based both on principles and on centring their peoples’ needs. In a sense, these attributes mirror India’s foreign policy approach over the last few years. Over the past decade, India has pioneered a multilateralism that is built around limited-liability, flexible partnerships: From the Quad to I2U2 to BRICS.

After the Delhi Summit, the emerging world knows that India’s achievements are commensurate with the breadth of their shared aspirations. Look at the scope of the commitments taken on by the G20 under the Indian presidency—from biofuels to the reform of international development banks. There is not one that is not of great—in some cases existential—importance to the developing world. And in all these initiatives, India is either a catalyst or a driver.

Global leadership today must take on the task of reshaping the world’s economy to the benefit of those who seek to still benefit from globalisation in a new avatar. Fortuitously, IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) will be in the chair of the world’s most multilateral grouping for another two years. And they have supported each other admirably. Just as India aided Indonesia in the last-minute scramble for agreement at Bali last year, the emerging market democracies came together to make a Delhi consensus possible.

Global leadership today must take on the task of reshaping the world’s economy to the benefit of those who seek to still benefit from globalisation in a new avatar.

But even among these nations, India is first among equals: With the largest population, greatest economy, and highest growth rate. It also has a geography that makes it impossible to ignore. The task of leadership cannot be avoided, and India has stepped up to do its duty. India matters. And India delivered. In that sense, the Delhi G20 is the intellectual and political successor to the Pittsburgh G20.

In Pittsburgh, 14 years ago, China’s GDP was the same as India’s today. It was growing fast—a country increasingly open, reformist, and dynamic. What a difference a generation makes! Today, an unstable China, struggling with its own woes, is a source of concern for all. It is a cause of anxiety, rather than a source of strength. Few nations can look to it and expect a stalling China to power their growth stories in the coming decades.

Another generation from now, the world would have changed again, but this time thanks to India’s rise. The world moulded by the Delhi Summit will be one of people-focused principles, and agile, trust-based partnerships. It will be one in which, for the first time in human history, global governance will be directed towards the needs of the majority of the global population. India’s foreign minister, Dr S Jaishankar, said it best. This G20, he told us, was making the world ready for India and India ready for the world.

This article is an updated version of a previously published article in the World Economic Forum. 

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G20, G20 India

Rescripting Globalisation: A Tide that Lifts All Boats

India has changed the tone and texture of the G20. What was once a summit meant merely for technocrats and policy wonks has become a people’s festival

As the world’s leaders gather in New Delhi, it is clear that India’s G20 presidency will be remembered as a historic pivot in global governance. The 2023 G20 slogan — “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” or “The world is one family” — exemplifies a typical Indian melding of tradition and contemporary concerns.

For a G20 summit that is about reviving, reforming, and defending globalisation, vasudhaiva kutumbakam has taken on a meaning beyond hospitality to visitors from across the world. Translated into the rallying cry of “One Earth, One Family, One Future”, it emphasises the interconnection of cultures across geographies, and, as in families, reminds us of our obligation to those left behind, those yet to benefit from globalisation.

Of the many priorities India is taking forward in its stewardship of the G20, three serve to illustrate how the concerns of the Global South have come to occupy centre stage. The first principle is the democratisation and decentralisation of the global economy. “One Earth, One Family, One Future” should be seen especially in the backdrop of recent geo-economic developments that threaten our interconnected futures. Muscular industrial policy has staged a return in geographies that were once the strongest votaries of globalisation.

The United States has passed an Inflation Reduction Act that, in its specifics and motivations, looks little different from the nativist “Make America Great Again” agenda that preceded it. The European Union is girding to introduce a carbon border tax. At best, the rest of the world sees this as an attempt to regulate external markets on European principles. At worst, it looks like open protectionism of a sort the EU has historically attacked when it comes from much poorer countries. Correcting this drift away from the pure principles of globalisation — in which all benefit, but the poor benefit the most — is a priority for the developing world.

The second is reform and restoration of global finance. Since the 2008 crisis, financial globalisation has ceased to operate properly. The purpose of finance is to take savings and deploy them in projects, sectors, and geographies where they will garner the greatest returns. Where are those projects, sectors, and geographies today? As various agencies including the International Monetary Fund estimate, over three-fourths of global growth in the coming years will be in emerging economies.

International finance is, however, still focused on serving the old trans-Atlantic geographies. Wealth creation has been disconnected from growth creation. A financial sector that indulges merely in the perverse redistribution of wealth within societies rather than in enabling global growth that raises all boats is simply unfit for purpose. This G20, under India’s presidency, and those that follow, will aim to fix development and infrastructure finance so that capital can flow to the places where it can best stimulate growth — benefiting all of us, across the world.

Third, and most important, India has changed the tone and texture of the G20. What was once a summit meant merely for technocrats and policy wonks has become a people’s festival. The people’s G20 has a purpose: To amplify the issues that matter to the billions who have been, for too long, ignored by those technocrats and wonks. Dialogue on urgent issues — food, health, jobs, adaptation to climate change — has brought hundreds of millions of Indians, and billions beyond our shores, into the ambit of the global governance discussion. From now on, every presidency will include such perspectives, regions and demographics. India’s proud contribution to the G20 is a diversity that will shake the tree of global governance.

In the past, G20 summits have been remembered for activists outside the venues, protesting against the idea of global governance itself. There is always a place for dissent. India, as a vibrant democracy, knows this better than anyone. But the only answer to such activism is the creation of a wider group that can argue against it. The people’s G20 correctly recognises that democratised global governance and a reformed globalisation can enthuse a wider group, and thereby answer the concerns of those activists who sought to disrupt previous G20s. The warm embrace given to the G20 in India by Opposition-run state governments and marginalised groups is an indicator that there is nothing political or partisan about this hope. India has found a wider, deeper and more expansive response to the malaise of global governance.

This historic turn towards the Global South marked by India’s G20 has begun to redress decades of reductionism. The Global South is no longer a pejorative. India’s G20 has reclaimed this description and shown that our self-image is of a group seeking green growth, tech-first growth, women-led growth, and inclusive growth. Scholarship from richer countries may have been dismissive of the developing world and its aspirations. But today the Global South is seen as wanting more than just handouts. India’s vibrant scholar community, India’s deft diplomacy and, indeed, India’s warm hospitality have reclaimed our identity. For the first time, the Global South is the pathfinder for a greener, digital and equitable growth. This is the developmental legacy of the people’s G20, and of India’s presidency.

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