World leaders including US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reached New Delhi Friday for the G20 Summit starting Saturday amid divisions in the grouping over the Russia-Ukraine war and China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific and the South China Sea. Welcoming the leaders as India seeks a greater say for the developing world at the G20 table, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “It is my firm belief that the New Delhi G20 Summit will chart a new path in human-centric and inclusive development.” He held bilateral meetings with Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina before hosting a dinner for President Biden. India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said the New Delhi Declaration will be a voice of the Global South and the developing countries. Addressing a press conference on the eve of the two-day Summit, Kant said, “The New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration, which many of you will see post the Summit, you will see it as a voice of the Global South and the developing countries. No document in the world would have such a strong voice for the Global South and the developing countries as the New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration.” “We started our Presidency… with a meeting of the voice of the Global South. We got the perspective of 125 leaders and then we remain focused on the perspective of the Global South and the requirements of the developing countries,” he said. “I can assure you that our presidency has been inclusive, decisive and action-oriented. Our New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration is almost ready. I would not like to delve into it because the declaration will be recommended to the leaders and the leaders will then accept it, and only after it has been accepted by the leaders, we will be able to talk about the actual achievements of this declaration,” Kant said. He said Prime Minister Modi’s vision of India’s G20 Presidency is “inclusive Presidency”. “There has been a huge scale and reach of India’s Presidency. There have been 19 G20 countries and the EU… 29 special invited countries, there have been three regional organisations, there have been 11 international organisations, who have participated in all the 220 meetings that took place in India,” he said. Kant said India assumed the G20 Presidency in the midst of a scenario of slowing growth and productivity worldwide. “There was a huge impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which had led to vast segments of the global population going below the poverty line. Vast number of people lost their jobs… There has been a reversal on the sustainable development goals. There was a challenge of climate crisis and climate action. At that point, India felt that we should start our Presidency with the theme of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam i.e. the world is one family,” he said. Responding to a query on the Summit declaration, Kant said, “On the journey of the joint declaration, I would prefer to speak after the Summit is over because the journey has just started. It has not ended.” Along with Kant, Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra, Chief Coordinator (G20) Harsh Vardhan Shringla, and Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth also addressed the press conference. Kwatra said, “The Summit official conference programme is structured around two sessions. First, One Earth starting tomorrow morning. One Family, tomorrow afternoon; and One Future on the morning of the 10th. Besides the three sessions of the conference, there will also be a couple of sideline events which are currently being structured involving India and other Heads of State who are visiting us.” He said President Droupadi Murmu will host a dinner Saturday for the Summit leaders. There will be a visit to Rajghat to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi and a programme for the spouses. He said Prime Minister Modi will be hosting several sideline, bilateral meetings during the course of the Summit with the visiting Heads of State and governments and the other leaders. Shringla said that hosting of G20 meetings across states and Union Territories is the finest example of cooperative federalism. “In keeping with the Prime Minister’s vision of a pan-Indian G20. We have hosted one G20 meeting in at least every state and union territory of India. To my mind, that is the finest example of cooperative federalism that we can see,” he said. “In this process, it has been a whole of government approach and a whole of nation approach. Every single Indian citizen has been involved in that effort and it’s very important to note that about 15 million of our citizens have been directly involved in the participation of some G20 event or the other across our country.”
