India’s Sherpa Amitabh Kant led G20 negotiators’ discussions in Hampi last week to draft a leaders’ declaration for the upcoming G20 leaders’ summit in September. The summit to be held at Pragati Maidan will be the grand finale of the presidency of India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to host US President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin, if that happens, opening up the possibility of the two sides coming face-to-face for the first time since Russia. Invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Of course, a ceasefire and peace are the ideal outcome. Putin’s presence will also not be less. In a less-than-ideal world, India will be ready to announce a leader, as has happened at each G20 summit. It would be unprecedented in the history of the grouping if nothing comes out of the New Delhi summit.
One challenge in getting everyone to agree is the reference to Ukraine. Russia and China want to block any reference to Ukraine after distancing themselves from the language agreed upon in Bali. He says that the G20 group should remain focused on economic and development issues. Kant said in Hampi that Ukraine is not a priority among the outcomes India is pressing for during his presidency, as wars are not the product of developing or emerging countries. The official statement on Ukraine is silent on the progress of drafting the New Delhi leaders’ declaration. But, on Sunday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a press conference in Gandhinagar, where Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is hosting a G20 ministerial meeting of her counterparts, that Ukraine would be one of four focus areas for the week. Yellen pledged support to the Global South, and in the same breath slammed Sitharaman’s announcement at the February summit in Bangalore about an agenda for an overhaul of multilateral institutions that would help poor countries in the coming years. Will give billions of dollars in loans. Tackle poverty, climate change and development. Few are satisfied with how the US-controlled World Bank has been doing since it began operations in 1946. This is all the more so because this institution is used by the US as an instrument of geopolitics. The World Bank itself has issued several reports saying that it needs improvement. This has been an ongoing discussion during previous G20 Chairs, and recommendations have been sought from experts on how to do this.
On Sunday, Yellen rejected the main recommendation presented to India’s presidency, which sought to raise more capital from the World Bank’s shareholders to increase support for poor countries, before India made it public. . To no one’s surprise, he said now is not the time, and the US would like to reform the World Bank first. Indian interlocutors expected this. It’s no secret that rich countries, led by the US, don’t want to put in the money needed to solve crises that they have partly caused. Nor do they want to accept funding from China, fearing that doing so would give Beijing a larger stake in the World Bank, and therefore, greater importance on the world stage.
India should stress the need for institutions in which the non-wealthy world can have a say and demand that they be given a greater role – something the World Bank people avoid by saying that the World Bank’s biggest borrower G7 is not a country but India. Which, even if true, is not due to generosity or love of country. It just makes good business sense, as India has a very good record of servicing debt.
But Yellen confirmed that the US would retain its veto power over the World Bank, bypassing emerging rival economic challengers such as China and India. It will continue to use multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to maintain its hegemonic power over global finance, its architecture, and to control how the world battles the crises of climate, poverty and development. In this plan, poor countries take on more debt so that the burden of meeting climate goals is reduced for everyone, including rich countries. The World Bank will be the main intermediary for billions of dollars being spent and raised, now also from private companies, as indicated by the recent words of India-born American Ajay Banga, who is now the bank’s president.
India is also exploring the possibility of inducting the African Union (AU) as a member of the G20. The AU is not very supportive of the G7 on Ukraine and may feel that G20 membership will not be easily available in the near future. Perhaps the negotiators will come up with sounding diplomatic terms that will ensure the AU continues to be invited to future summits, as it already does, but will have no role in G20 declarations.
What legacy does India want from its G20 presidency? It is not clear what India wants from the New Delhi announcement. There are suggestions that the legacy of India’s tenure should restore faith in multilateralism. If our interlocutors succeed in getting Ukraine out of the New Delhi Leaders Declaration, India’s presidency will be remembered as a resounding success. This would signal that the G7 is not making decisions, given how a pushback on Ukraine won the day.
However, the G7 is driving the agenda as usual. South Korea, the first non-G7 country to chair the G20, held preliminary consultations with other member states and at the national level before setting the agenda. India could do the same to shape a tangible deliverable agenda within the G20 for its national development goals.
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UPDATE: July 17, 2023, 08:40 PM IST