G20 summit: How India put the Global South in the spotlight

Aside from a couple of key no-shows, world leaders are flocking to Delhi this weekend to participate in the G20 summit, a culmination of India’s yearlong presidency of the Group of 20 leading nations.

The theme is “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” or “One Earth, One Family, One Future,” chosen by India to highlight its ability to foster international cooperation. And at the head of the table is the Global South.

The current G20 troika – composed of India; its predecessor, Indonesia; and its successor, Brazil – marks the first time that all three countries are from the Global South. (The next troika will be the second time, with Indonesia rotating out and South Africa coming in.)

Historically, the concerns of the Global South have been largely neglected in international platforms, and the G20 – the premier forum for global economic cooperation – is no exception.

As a country with improving ties to the Global North, but that faces issues similar to those of the Global South, India has spent this past year marketing itself as a bridge between the two worlds. Issues such as climate change, inclusive economic growth, sustainable development, and food security have dominated the agenda throughout India’s presidency, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promoted India as a voice for the Global South. 

Experts say the 2023 summit will serve as a victory lap for India, which has made great strides in positioning itself as a global leader and helped advance concerns of non-G20 members. However, some note that the Global South’s growing prominence in the G20 and other international forums predates India’s presidency.

“There is a deeper trend that is at play, which is the enlargement of the international playing field for the Global South,” says Karoline Postel-Vinay, research director at the International Research Center of the National Foundation for Political Science in Paris (Sciences Po). “The G20 is more a reflection than a cause of that trend.”

India in the driver’s seat

Dr. Postel-Vinay, author of the 2013 book “The G20: A New Geopolitical Order,” notes that when the G20 began hosting annual heads-of-state summits in 2008, it was “de facto Western-centric and the very first meeting didn’t have much traction within Global South countries.” She credits leaders such as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with promoting the needs of emerging economies. In 2022, Indonesia hosted the first G20 summit in the Global South.

“But the Bali Summit took place less than a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so the immediate challenge was to save the very principle of multilateralism,” she says via email. “India now has more maneuvering room to focus more on the Global South’s interests.”

Shortly after assuming the G20 presidency this January, India organized the two-day virtual Voice of the Global South Summit. The purpose was to provide a platform for developing countries not represented in the G20 to voice their expectations about economic growth, development agendas, and hopes for India’s presidency. India extended invites to Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Mauritius, Oman, and others. Leaders from 125 developing countries participated.

Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, chief executive of the Johannesburg-based think tank South African Institute of International Affairs, says India “put development at the center of discussions” and made “real efforts to include African voices, not just from South Africa,” which has historically been the continent’s only voice in the G20.

Indeed, one of the highlights of India’s presidency has been the country’s push for making the 55-member African Union (AU) the 21st member of the G20 – a move Ms. Sidiropoulos says would significantly increase Africa’s influence on multilateral development bank reform, climate justice, and debt sustainability.

She says India’s push for AU membership also reflects the country’s competition with China, which has invested heavily in the Global South, providing loans and infrastructure assistance throughout Africa and Latin America. But amid mounting debt-trap accusations against China and the shifting geopolitical environment following the invasion of Ukraine, India sensed an opportunity to challenge China’s dominance in the race to lead the Global South.

“In that sense, PM Modi’s request that the AU be admitted sends a strong message to Africa about India’s support for its cause,” Ms. Sidiropoulos says.

Yet Swaran Singh, a professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University whose areas of expertise include India and China’s security issues, argues that reducing India’s motives to China competition “would be too simplistic and myopic,” adding that the G20 summit, if nothing else, is India’s “opportunity to showcase its diverse culture, its developmental projects, and its potential to thousands of visitors,” which will inevitably lead to more trade and foreign investment.  

“Irrespective of the outcomes of their 2023 summit, the fact that concerns of Global South have become center stage in all deliberations of over 200 meetings involving stakeholders representing multiple sectors ... surely carries an India imprint,” says Dr. Singh.

Challenges remain

Yet India still faces some final tests before it declares its term a success. 

Chief among them, Dr. Postel-Vinay says, is getting the G20 members to sign a joint communiqué. India has failed to get a joint statement signed in any of the key discussion tracks during its presidential term, meaning this would be the only official statement produced by the grouping. If India is unable to create consensus on a joint statement, it would be the first such instance since 2008. But the final communiqué could turn out to be a bone of contention.

France has explicitly stated that it would not sign any G20 communiqué that does not condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Amid rising tensions over India-China border disputes, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s decision to skip the New Delhi summit and send Premier Li Qiang instead is seen as another major hurdle for building consensus.

And even if India succeeds in producing a communiqué, the continued rise of the Global South’s profile within the G20 is not a given. 

African Union membership alone presents many logistical challenges, experts point out, and the group would need immense support to ensure its member states could fully participate in key discussions and produce an implementable mandate.

And the Global South is not a monolith – even within certain regions, which face many common problems, cooperation can be tough.

Philippe Martini Toriz, a doctoral scholar at Sciences Po, Paris who researches international development with a focus on Latin America, says that conflicting governing styles and economic views of countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico can present roadblocks for consensus-building within the G20, regardless of the president or agenda. 

But it’s still worth trying, and India has spent its year in the driver’s seat doing just that. He describes India’s presidency as a breakthrough for the Global South – though not a massive one. 

“This debate about multilateral institutions being more fair to third world countries and being more equitable in the way they are governed” has been going on for years, he says. “So even though [India’s G20 agenda] could be regarded as progress ... it mirrors the current debate in other institutions.”