In the G-20 meetings that took place in Mumbai, significant attention was paid to the environment. Another priority was sending into extinction the global terror industry.
Mumbai: Last November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took on the responsibility of assuming the Presidency of the G-20, the group comprising the world’s twenty largest economies. Since then, the Indian Presidency has engineered a transformation in the way in which the G-20 has been functioning, making its activity not a sporadic but a continuous process. Across India, meetings involving the 19 countries (plus the European Union taken as a separate entity) have been held, and reviews and action plans worked out and initiated. The latest of these planning sessions has just concluded in India’s Maximum City. During the latter part of the week. Mumbai witnessed the Mid-Year Review meeting of members of the G-20 in what is among the largest such complexes in the world, the Jio World Centre in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex. Its vast inner spaces include the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, which was bequeathed to the city in a context where the last mega cultural centre built in Mumbai was the National Centre for Performing Arts in 1969. The dimensions of each segment of the Jio World Centre are immense, such as the world’s biggest passenger lift. “Yeh hai Mumbai, meri jaan”, so it is small wonder that the newly opened Jio World Centre was chosen as the venue for the meeting in Mumbai of the country teams dealing with issues confronting the G-20. As in previous sessions, the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) together with the Ministry of External Affairs played the anchor role in organising logistics for facilitating work of the G-20 during India’s year at the helm.
As a consequence of the whiplash effect of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, there arose doubts whether the G-20 would survive the fissure between Russia and the member-states of NATO, both of which are represented in the G-20. Deft diplomacy by Indonesia ensured that the fractures which had developed within the G-20 as a consequence of Ukraine did not result in the amputation of any member, an outcome in which Indonesian President Widodo’s friend Narendra Modi played a significant role. After India took over the rotating G-20 Presidency last November, the country that is the champion of the Global South ensured that a divided Global North (which includes not just the United States and Russia but the world’s other superpower, China) sat down together in parleys at least during the Indian Presidency.
The G-20 was born of the effort by Atlanticist economic powerhouses to help deal with the shocks caused by the Asian currency turmoil of 1999. The group was elevated to the Heads of Government level in 2008 after the global crash in stock markets that began on Wall Street. In 2023, the G-20 has emerged as the premier international group. It spans East and West, North and South, in a way that the G-7 or IBSA does not. However, both the G-7 as well as IBSA are represented in the G-20. In every meeting held thus far during the Indian Presidency, Russia, the US, France, UK and Italy have among other members sat across each other in the spirit of the motif created in 2023 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is that the world is “One Earth, One Family, One Future”. The ancient concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam presented in the Hitopadesa is the theme that runs through 2023, the year of the Indian Presidency.
INDIA SHOWCASES ITS DIVERSITY
Within the G-20, IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa) represents the three continents that comprise the Global South: Asia, South America and Africa. The three IBSA countries share a close bond with each other, and the level of trilateral interaction is being sought to be increased during 2023 in a context where Brazil next assumes the G-20 Presidency. Despite its substantial share in global population, GDP and resources, the G-20 had not been as important a player in the geopolitical sphere as the G-7, or indeed regional groups of significance such as ASEAN. This is what Prime Minister Modi intended to change during the India Presidency, by placing the G-20 out of the “lower earth” orbit that it had remained confined to since its elevation to summit level fifteen years ago. The intent is to shift it to a much higher trajectory during 2023. Until the Indian Presidency, the G-20 was marked by limited interaction within the members acting as a single group. This changed since Prime Minister Modi has assumed the Presidency, and an unprecedented series of meetings and events has already taken place and will take place during 2023 that are connected with the G-20, which will culminate in the September 2023 Summit in New Delhi.
In between, cities and towns across the whole of India have been chosen as the venues for the many G-20 related meetings and events that have already taken place or are to take place in India during 2023. All this diversity has given attendees from the G-20 countries a glimpse into not just Incredible but Innovative India, and for many delegates, it has been the first time that they have visited what is now the most populous country in the world. Just as the G-20 spans all four corners of the globe, so do G-20 events range across the length and breadth of India, from west to east and north to south. While the nineteen largest economies of the world have been better introduced to India during 2023, so has the entirety of India been introduced to what many say are the most consequential countries in the world. G-20 members include the four Great Powers (the US, Russia, China and India) as also two powers that on track to Great Power status, Brazil and Indonesia. Interestingly, Indonesia was the previous President of the G-20, while Brazil is the next. Given that happy coincidence, it is a near certainty that there will be continuity in the transformative process that has been initiated this year by Prime Minister Modi once President Lula assumes that awesome responsibility by the close of the Indian Presidency.
INCLUSIVITY, PROSPERITY & SECURITY SOUGHT
The Indian Presidency inter alia places emphasis on inclusivity, prosperity and security. These form a trinity of outcomes (gender justice ranking among the top) that are sought to be realised through the efforts of the G-20. The plan is to make the transformative processes initiated in 2023 a fixture of the regular functioning of the group. NGOs, universities, think tanks and other institutions both public and private have been harnessed to assist in the search for pathways leading to success in achieving the outcomes sought by India for not just the G-20 but for the Global South, the group whose interests have been brought to centre-stage during 2023. There is a particular focus by India on Africa, a continent that will emerge as a powerful growth engine of the future, especially once its young generation secures the education and training needed to enter the job markets of the 21st century. Such is the task in which the G-20 needs to contribute significantly. Africa is special, which is why that continent is central in much of the planning and analytical effort going on within the list of experts who have been mobilised under the G-20 umbrella during 2023. Rather than merely being activated only during a Summit, the objective of Prime Minister Modi is to make the G-20 a living organism that works around the year and around the clock in a common purpose to achieve stated outcomes.
ENVIRONMENT A PRIORITY
In the G-20 meetings that took place in Mumbai during 10, 11 and 12 May, significant attention was paid to the environment, so as to ensure that the burnout of Mother Earth that has been caused by centuries of reckless disregard of the consequences of abusing the environment gets reversed in time for succeeding generations. Another priority is the sending into extinction of the global terror industry. India is clear that there needs to be a policy of Zero Tolerance towards Terror, with Zero Exemptions where the practitioners and planners of terror machines across the world are concerned. This objective has been made a priority by the Indian side in presentations made to all the partners and has found resonance amongst the other members. While the Ukraine conflict figured in some of the discussions that took place in Mumbai, the statement that “this is not the era of war” that was articulated by Prime Minister Modi to President Putin in September 2022 was the spirit that animated the discussions.
Mechanisms for relieving the debt burden of the poorer countries were formulated so as to begin efforts to get them actioned. Vaccine equity and gender justice were themes that were emphasised by India and other countries. All this in a context where there has been no progress on the 2020 proposal by India and South Africa (backed by Brazil) that patents for vaccines needed to fight Covid-19 needed to be freed from patent restrictions. The Covid-19 pandemic caused immense suffering to many and immense profits to a few. Vaccine doses in the hundreds of millions were allowed to expire unused in some countries, while in others tens of millions of victims suffered and died because they had no access to vaccines. It is to move away from such inequities that the effort in 2023 is to consider the whole world as a single family, and to work towards cures and improvements that are of universal applicability. Despite the geopolitical fault lines that have emerged within the Global North in recent years, the frequency and cordiality with which the Indian side in particular interacted with both the US as well as the Russian side was noteworthy. Hopefully, this is a harbinger of future cooperation between these two Great Powers that today are staring at each other across a chasm leading to potential conflict.
The functioning of the group in 2023 has made it clear to the world that the G-20 is not just a talking shop but is on the way to being an instrument of public good, including for the most disadvantaged of people within a country, as well as the poorest within the comity of nations. The flame of universality of solutions lit in 2023 is expected to remain bright in the succeeding years, now that the G-20 has shown itself to be a grouping that searches for and seeks to actualise universal global solutions despite bilateral and other differences between some of its members. Universal needs need to bring forth universal solutions, and 2023 is witnessing an impetus in just such a process through the mechanism of the G-20.