cover image: G20 in 2023 Priorities for India’s Presidency

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G20 in 2023 Priorities for India’s Presidency

29 Nov 2022

India will assume the G20 presidency on 1 December 2022 at a critical juncture in global affairs. This presidency provides India with the opportunity to steer one of the more effective multilateral forums for global governance. India’s presidency is momentous for several reasons. The critical challenges confronting humanity today are global in character, not confined by national boundaries, and require collective action. Solving these challenges demands multilateral initiatives. Nevertheless, multilateralism is in a state of decline. The failure to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and the inability to avert the Russia-Ukraine war has further accentuated the fault lines in multilateralism. India’s presidency is an opportunity to revive multilateralism. India can steer the empowerment of alternative international institutions of global governance that respond to the realities of the twenty-first century and direct global governance in the ‘decade of action’ to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Global governance is skewed in favour of developed economies as they exert a disproportionate influence on setting international rules of cooperation, trade, and finance. This has adversely affected the ability of global governance in delivering substantive solutions to enable the Global South constituencies in tackling fundamental challenges to development, trade, and security. India can utilise its G20 presidency as an opportunity to rethink global governance processes and establish parity in international negotiations. The G20 troika in the next year will comprise three emerging economies—Indonesia (the past chair), India (the current chair), and Brazil (the incoming chair). The roadmap of India’s G20 agenda must leverage this troika to address the concerns of the developing world in a coherent and focussed manner and facilitate greater agency of those countries not represented by the G20 membership. A fractured G20 posed a setback to the Indonesian presidency as geopolitical tensions between the West and Russia undermined cooperation within the grouping. This fissure in the G20 has cast doubts on its credibility. India’s neutral stance in relation to the Russia-Ukraine war provides hope that it might be able to bring both sides to participate in the G20 proceedings and make some headway beyond the current deadlock. India is faced with the task of identifying creative solutions to bridge these geopolitical differences and pave the way for conversations anchored in cooperation and collective prosperity. Indeed, India’s presidency might be expected to steer the articulation of an unambiguous G20 policy on the Russia-Ukraine war.
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Authors

Renita D’souza, Shruti Jain, Preeti Lourdes John

Published in
India

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