A presidency in peril

Two recent ministerial-level summits of the Group of 20 nations ended without a joint statement from those assembled. For the Indian government, deeply invested in its G20 presidency as a sign of its global leadership, this might be a major problem — and one it cannot solve without being more pro-active than it is usually comfortable being.

Indonesia’s presidency of the G20 last year exceeded expectations because the hosts — with some help, reportedly, from the Indian delegation — managed to get Europe (and the rest of the West) largely on the same page as Russia (and China) with respect to Ukraine-related language in the joint statement. Yet that agreement proved tenuous, and it appears that the same language used then has now become unacceptable to Russia and China. The Europeans and Americans, meanwhile, seem determined to introduce the topic of the Russian invasion even into joint statements issued by delegates to the finance track of the G20, which has to deal with such issues only obliquely, and in terms of their economic fallout.

India’s official position is that the lack of joint statements is not a problem, and that communiques from the chair of the meeting on shared issues can take their place. Yet from the point of view of India’s chosen position as a bridge between West and East and between North and South, the inability to craft even a weak consensus as well as the Indonesians will be a worry.

The Indian leadership’s interest in the G20 presidency is partly self-serving, but not completely. The fact is that given the obvious decay of multiple other organs of multilateralism, the G20 is seen in New Delhi as one of the few locations where consequential decisions about shared issues can be taken. Indian diplomats also feel that alienation from global governance has increased rapidly in the global South since the pandemic, and at least some institutions should demonstrate a minimal level of effectiveness if this alienation is not to grow to crisis proportions.

It is also clear that other plurilateral mechanisms are being developed to replace or patch existing multilateral institutions. Japan, for example, on Friday announced it was joining a new dispute resolution system piloted by the European Union that is designed to substitute for a non-operational adjudication process at the World Trade Organization. These new plurilateral mechanisms are being designed without the voice of or a leadership role for developing nations and India in particular, and thus should concern New Delhi.

New Delhi also sees its presidency as being part of a multi-year effort, initiated by Indonesia and to be carried on in 2024 by Brazil and 2025 by South Africa, to reframe the global governance conversation around the specific asks of developing countries. This longer-term effort is also at risk if India’s presidency does not live up to expectations.

One problem is, however, that a serious agenda of repairing multilateralism, addressing shared problems, and cementing Indian and emerging-world participation in global governance, is also easy to undermine. If delegates to the G20 think that there is insufficient attention to the real problems and too much effort to create an “India narrative”, they will be less invested in positive outcomes. They also risk backlash at home, such as what is currently visible in the Australian media to the personalisation of diplomacy surrounding its prime minister’s visit to India. This is a delicate question in New Delhi, given the politics of personalisation has taken over in India. But the current dispensation should at least weigh the benefits from such personalisation against the risks of not achieving as much and failing to demonstrate India’s global leadership to the satisfaction of voters.

The best solution to both problems —more concrete divisions between West and East than were visible last year, and less active engagement by countries who may assume India’s presidency is built around spectacle — is to increase the amount of political attention being paid to a broader agenda and not just one that benefits India in particular. Specific proposals for reform, for new institutions, and for shifts to global and regional financial and economic systems will force engagement from India’s partners at the G20. These proposals can embed the specific asks of developing countries, ideally agreed on in advance in side summits with Brazil and South Africa, the next hosts. And by shifting the subject away from the Russian invasion, they will also ensure that areas of agreement can be found on global issues that minimise the chance that the final summit is a divided debacle.