India and the G8 circus

It is unlikely that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who is heading tomorrow to the Group of Eight industrial countries in St Petersburg, will reject a possible membership of the world’s most exclusive club of the rich and powerful.

Joining any world club that existed has for long been India’s national obsession. Ironically, exactly when the world is talking about India becoming part of G-8, the summit itself has begun to lose a lot of its old shine.

Although G8 membership is not on offer, India has certainly become a regular invitee to annual summit meetings. France was the first to invite India to annual G-8 jamboree in Evian in 2003.

Last year, India was again present, along with four other important nations—China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa—to discuss energy and climate change at the Gleneagles summit hosted by Britain.

This year, the Prime Minister will join the G-8 deliberations at St Petersburg, Russia, on global energy security, health and education.

On the eve of the St Petersburg summit, British Prime Minister Tony Blair proposed the institutionalisation of the annual interaction between the eight developed nations and the five developing countries. For now, the engagement with the five developing countries is an “outreach” by the G8, which includes the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia.

This, presumably, is the first step towards an expansion of the G-8 into G-13. Meanwhile, analysts around the world have insisted that to be relevant, the G-8 must become G-10 by drawing in China and India as full members. While such an outcome is not on the cards either at this summit in Russia or the next one in Germany, the wisdom of keeping China and India outside the chamber and leaving Canada and Italy is being widely questioned.

China’s GDP has already overtaken—in current dollar terms—that of many European members of the G-8.

In a few years, only Japan and the US will be ahead of China in collective national wealth. If India continues to grow at the current rate levels, its economy will begin to overtake those of the smaller members of the G-8.

As a resurgent China and India alter the foundations of global geopolitics, it is only a matter of time before G-8 will be compelled to adapt itself to the new realities on the ground. But that process of adaptation will not necessarily be linear. Re-ordering the present global institutions—G-8 or the permanent membership of the UN Security Council, will have to be more than adding to the membership.

Before Russia was let into the club of the western industrial democracies, the G-7 was seen as the economic directorate of the world.

What started in the early 1970s as an informal gathering of the key western leaders to discuss global economy, has now evolved into a jamboree of gigantic proportions.

The informality has long given way to intense bureacratisation. Pre-cooked summit statements will be issued, and quickly forgotten. Do you remember what the G-8 said last year on climate change? The more important question is whether it is worth remembering.

The G-8 pretense of being the global economic directorate has taken a beating and not just because of the rise of China and India. It is the US and Europe that are holding back progress on the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation.

The West and Japan now have bigger problems coping with economic globalisation. The western political leaders are finding it hard to reconcile the entrenched social welfare state in the West with the demands for economic flexibility.

On the political front, too, the G8 is hardly the super-empowered board of directors of world politics. The internal divisions within the G-8 have never been as sharp as they are today. The St Petersburg summit is about President Vladimir Putin’s celebration of Russia’s long-awaited entry into the “political West”. But Putin will be lucky if he can stop some of the Western leaders from peeing on his party.

While Russia has become more assertive amid rising oil wealth, many Western leaders are deeply concerned at Russia’s drift towards authoritarianism. As the G-8 talks energy security, many in the West believe Russia is part of the problem rather than the solution.

Worse still, the US-Russian relations are at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War. While Bush and Putin will try and avoid a further deterioration of relations, they might find it difficult to hide their deep differences.

An assertive Russia is tying up with China to limit American influence in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Far East. As Israel, North Korea and Iran dominate the headlines from St Petersburg, the differences among the G-8 will be out in the open.

On Israel and Palestine, the US and Europe have different approaches. On North Korea, US and Japan are ranged against Russia and China. And on Iran, Moscow and Beijing want to play it softly, while the US and the Europeans take a hard line.

Putin apparently has plans to hold the first trilateral summit meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. India will also have the time to touch base with the leaders of its own smaller strategic triangle with Brazil and South Africa.

To be seen and heard in the courtyards of the wealthy and the influential has its uses. But there is no reason for India to be overwhelmed.

India’s moment to be part of the global decision making has not yet arrived. But it is not too far away either. Until then, India should focus on getting a feel for the tectonic shifts in the global balance of power.

There is no better place to get a sense of this than G-8 summits. As the internal divisions begin to weaken the once impressive G-8 formation and its annual exhortations become less and less effective, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a valuable opportunity to see the old global order struggling to hold together and a new one yet to be born.

The unfolding transformation of world politics will imply not a mere expansion of the present arrangements; It will necessarily involve creating new exclusive clubs.

Getting India into those should be at the back of Manmohan Singh’s mind.