The 18th G20 Leaders’ Summit meeting commences today. It has started on a positive note, with the strengthening bilateral of two important G20 members — host India and the US — reinforced, in recent times, by business deals, defence partnerships and leader-to-leader bonhomie. Other bilateral meetings will be similarly strong. With the Chinese and Russian leadership staying away, there will be less friction to manage.
It is therefore a good time to assess how much India has learned about becoming a multilateral leader, and how much multilateral leaders have learned to accommodate emerging powers. The exercise is necessary, for as the “economic steering committee of the world,” the G20 multilateral carries a heavy responsibility, especially as the United Nations is no longer seen to be a global problem-solver.
India’s goals for the year are international, domestic and specific to G20. Its presidency began with two parallel crises — the overhang of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, both affecting economies and geopolitics. On the pandemic, India had a head start, having managed the Covid-19 crisis well, and making pandemic preparedness the focus of its presidency. Health is part of India’s domestic agenda too, so this particular global crisis received the three-dimensional attention it needed for 2023. India will carry the successful health track experience into the Brazilian and South African presidencies too.
The presidency year was used to take a leadership position in digital inclusion, through digital public infrastructure (DPI), India’s unique offering for the G20. Like health, this has been tested on a continental scale, with success. The Unified Payments Interface is now available in nearly two dozen countries, and innovations based on it, especially with small businesses, are thriving. Strong resistance from private players in the US and Chinese state companies is to be expected — but the value proposition is compelling and persuasive.
On the matter of the Russia-Ukraine war, 2023 will be remembered as the year of the Great Divide, as developed and developing worlds are separated over issues of ideology and economic necessity. A regional border disagreement has been aggravated by ignoring legitimate Russian security interests, forcing countries to take sides. India has maintained a fine balance, managing its relationship with Russia and even enhancing its bilateral with the US, evident from the extravagant welcome and many agreements signed during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Washington DC in June.
These have achieved India’s three-dimensional goals as G20 President. Although the Leaders’ Summit will be held without the presence of the leaders of Russia or China, India’s neutral position on Russia-Ukraine has kept international equilibrium. At home, hosting the G20 has given citizens a sense of where India has reached in world affairs. This sense will be enhanced by the visuals of 18-plus world leaders confabulating in New Delhi on September 9.
On its part, has the multilateral leadership been accommodative? This grouping comprises mostly the G7, which has no dissenting voices and formidable internal cohesion. Within the G20, the G7 is pulling in a different direction on many important fronts. These include the Russia-Ukraine war, the reform of the multilateral financial architecture, debt forgiveness, digitalisation, energy and climate commitments and trade. The G7 is outnumbered on these issues by other members in the G20 who seek an end to the conflict, an equitable decision on debt and climate commitments, a new model of digital public infrastructure, and a focus on human capital-centric trade. There was hope that Japan, as the G7 President, would work together with its Asian partner India, the G20 President, to ease the fissures. This has not fructified.
And so the prevailing multilateral leadership remains unyielding, unwilling to accept the aspirations of the emerging order, and be a partner in writing the new global rules.
As with immovable objects, however, an unstoppable force has met the G7 in the form of long-suppressed global intensities: Military coups in West Africa, a desire to reduce the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar, expansion of BRICS, the social liberalisation underway in West Asia, implementation of open-source digital public infrastructure, and India’s remarkable lunar landing. All these have taken place in the last two months, accelerated by the food and energy distortions from the openly Western-driven war in Ukraine and fused with confidence from the high scientific and technological achievements of former colonies like India.
Efforts to create a more equitable multilateral order will continue for the next two G20 presidencies led by Brazil and South Africa. The India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) grouping already has a trilateral agenda in place, a good portion of which now overlaps with the G20 agenda. Expect to see this troika’s collaboration in health, digital inclusion, a reformed or new financial architecture, debt relief, sustainable lifestyle for climate goals, women-led development models — all with the inclusion of the African Union in the G20, a proposal made by India which will surely be accepted.
None of what the G20 proposes, or its outcomes, have to be adopted by its members. The G20 is not a treaty alliance. It is a forum for dialogue and cooperation. It is also now the platform best suited to adjust for, and accommodate, a world in transition. There will probably be fewer agreements between the G7 and the rest of the G20. But there will certainly be increased association between the G20 and the Global South which has long been kept out of a process run by the most powerful.
This has been India’s success. It has democratised the G20 process from intention and necessity. Running it in the spirit of a colourful festival may seem like an ad campaign to the elite, but it gives a sense of the familiar to the masses. Taking it to different cities across the country creates curiosity about an external event in a land which has largely been inward-looking. The rigorous policy emphasis is educative for bureaucrats and politicians presiding over a domestic transformation. Rising investment has ensured that the pivot between India and the governments of both developed and developing countries, has taken place. Extensive diplomacy has tied all the threads together.
Does this mean India will be less rule-taker, and a more equitable rule-maker? Not yet. India is a good rule-taking student: It has an 87 per cent compliance with the Bali Summit’s priority commitments, on par with Argentina and not so far from the EU’s 97 per cent score. Investors say India needs to be more material to global outcomes and incomes, to gain influence as a rule-maker. If absorbed well, the experience of its G20 presidency will certainly take the country and its cohorts along that path.
Kripalani is the Executive Director, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, Mumbai, and author of India in the G20: Rule-taker to Rule-maker
India’s goals for the year are international, domestic and specific to G20. (Express Photo by Amit Mehra) 
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