G20 to showcase India as new global power

The G20 meeting holds immense significance as it brings together the world’s major economies to address critical global economic issues. This platform serves as a forum for collaborative decision-making on topics such as economic growth, financial stability and international trade. Comprising 19 individual countries and the European Union, the G20 includes influential nations like the United States, China, Germany, India, and others. Listen in to know more.

As the Prime Minister rightly said, ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam –these two words capture a deep philosophy.’ It means ‘the world is one family’. This is an all-embracing outlook that encourages us to progress as one universal family, transcending borders, languages, and ideologies. During India’s G20 Presidency, this has translated into a call for human-centric progress. In tune with his ideology, the annual Group of 20 summit brings together world leaders in pursuit of a lofty goal: coordinating policy for the global economy.

Modi sees the G20 presidency as an opportunity to showcase India’s credentials as a bridge between Global South countries and the West. The G-20 2023 summit PM says assumes importance as the agenda in New Delhi includes climate change, economic development and debt burdens in low-income countries, as well as inflation spurred by Russia’s war in Ukraine. If members can reach consensus on any or all these subjects, they will produce an official joint declaration at the end.

Though some say that these summits hardly show any results. They mostly end by passing resolutions. As this has been the experience, how will the Delhi summit of G-20 group take forward the decisions? A look into the past experiences indicates that mostly the resolutions turn into gas fumes if the member-nations underperform. The G-20 summit that was held in Rome in 2021 decided to limit global warming with “meaningful and effective actions.” They also resolved to take a pledge to end financing of coal-based power plants overseas. Fine, but it did not consider what action should be taken regarding domestic investment and statistics indicate that the coal-based power generation across the world has shown new high. No measures to end coal use are taken.

However, what is interesting to note is that Prime Minister Modi, according observers, has proved to be a very effective salesman as he engaged in year-long marketing of the event. He unlike in the past did not treat this as a routine affair. He worked out strategies to showcase India as a new global power under his leadership. Since the presidency was handed over to Modi, there were over 200 meetings. What is to be noted here is that most of the posters or ad material had the portraits of Modi and the government had taken up mass education campaigns in several schools and had held essay writing competitions. It had even offered certificate coursed on G-20 literacy. Such buzz was not created so far by any nation so far.

As far as the Delhi summit is concerned, the bloc has focussed on deliberations relating to more loans to developing nationals from multilateral institutions, reforming international debt architecture, cryptocurrency and the impact of geopolitical uncertainties on food and energy security. The G20 partners during the two day deliberations will discuss a range of joint efforts to tackle global issues, including clean energy transition and combatting climate change, mitigating the economic and social impacts of Putin’s war in Ukraine, and increasing the capacity of multilateral development banks, including the World Bank, to better fight poverty, including by addressing global challenges. Hopefully, India will follow up and ensure that at least some of the resolutions transform into action.