MEA S Jaishankar charts out global south leader role for India at B20 Summit

Making the case for shifting the focus on the global south, the Minister of External Affairs, S Jaishankar, pictured India as leading the way in solving the problems in the developing world during his address at the B20 summit in Delhi on Sunday.

Jaishankar underscored the lack of balance in the global order and called for the urgent need to focus on the developing world, especially after witnessing the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It is however an undeniable reality that the international system remains dominated by the global north. This is naturally reflected in the composition of G20 as well. Perhaps this mattered less when the globalisation process appeared to offer more opportunities but as its inequities & unevenness became more apparent & then as we saw the Covid pandemic take a horrific toll across the world the need to focus on developing countries became more compelling…”

Pointing to the lack of representation for Global South — countries in the regions of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia (without Israel, Japan, and South Korea), and Oceania (without Australia and New Zealand) — in the G20 grouping, Jaishankar recalled efforts in reaching out to these countries to ascertain their problems and make them front and centre of agenda under India’s presidency.

“When India assumed the G20 Presidency last December, we were acutely conscious that most of the global south would not be at the table when we meet, this mattered very much…therefore PM decided to convene the Voice of the Global South Summit in January this year and we heard about their challenges and priorities and these have been made central to the G20 agenda”, said the Minister.

“The core mandate of the G20 is to promote economic growth & development and that cannot advance if the crucial concerns of the global south are not addressed…For a variety of reasons that range from scale, subsidy, technology, human resources & strategic choices the global south was reduced to being a consumer rather than a producer,

“Today’s India is the one where the world simultaneously witnesses experimentation, scaling up, deployment, innovation, & breakthroughs. I stress these developments not only because they solve 1/6th of the world’s problems, but because they provide replicable models for the rest of the global south,” he said.