In his interview to Press Trust of India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi explained the expansive political, diplomatic, and logistical investments that his government has made in hosting the G20 summit in Delhi this weekend. India is not the first country to run this summit — the chair rotates annually among its 20 members. But none of the previous hosts have turned it into as massive an exercise as Modi has. Many of the incoming hosts are already signaling that they do not have plans to sustain the scale and intensity that India has brought to the G20 this year.
The annual chairs of the G20 have considerable leeway in organising it; Delhi has taken full advantage of the political agency that accrues to the chair. India has hosted more than 200 meetings across 50 cities, and the subjects have ranged from a new regime on global taxation to promoting tourism, and from the export of the India model on digital public infrastructure to the consumption of millets.
The PM’s remarks to PTI reveal two broad strategic ambitions behind his government’s G20 diplomacy. One was to take the G20 to the masses. The carping from Modi’s critics that the G20 show was to boost the PM’s personal image misses an important point. From the beginning of his tenure as PM, Modi has been conscious of the domestic political value of external relations. He took diplomatic events outside Delhi to different parts of the country over the last nine years, and that approach has reached its pinnacle with the G20.
By taking the G20 to states and cities, the government has contributed to capacity building across the country in several domains. Above all, the PM says, it has helped develop confidence among the people that “they can deliver something world-class”. Of course, the PM’s image has got a big boost in the process. But taking diplomacy to the masses was an option that was available to all governments in Delhi. Modi’s predecessors, however, were content to treat diplomacy as a bureaucratic exercise limited to central Delhi.
The G20 has also allowed the PM to project India on the global stage. It was fortuitous that India’s G20 leadership coincided with Delhi’s brightening economic and geopolitical prospects. Modi seized the moment with both hands to not only raise India’s global profile but also claim credit for the domestic political stability of the last decade and the several reforms that have accelerated India’s economic growth. He was unwilling to let Russia’s war in Ukraine, the mounting tensions between Moscow and the West, and Delhi’s own difficult relations with Beijing undermine India’s G20 leadership. Delhi’s careful navigation of the Ukraine crisis without displeasing either Russia or the West and its willingness to stand up to Beijing on the border has only highlighted India’s rising strategic salience within the realignment of great power relations.
