Delhi's moment as voice of Global South

The Global South is still an amorphous entity that will begin to crystallise slowly. India, not China, will have the first-mover advantage in emerging as its leading voice

The G20 summit has concluded with host India and T its political leadership basking in the sweet glow of success, and domestic and international adulation. There was a massive public relations build-up to the summit, celebrating the occasion as an affirmation of India's emergence as one of the most consequential nations of the world and its leader, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi as an international statesman. There were doubts whether the outcomes would live up to the celebratory ambience.

There was the knotty issue of the Ukraine War, the unexpected absence of China's top leader Xi Jinping from the summit and, of course, the legacy of complex issues from earlier summits, including the indebtedness of poorer developing countries, particularly from Africa, the tepid response to the climate crisis even as it threatens planetary survival, and the unwillingness to engage in international cooperation and regulation of powerful technologies such as cyber and Artificial Intelligence, which can greatly enhance human welfare but could, if unrestrained, become instruments of unmitigated doom.

On all these counts, the New Delhi summit proved to be more substantive and forward looking than its predecessors, and that too, in a fractured geopolitical setting, with deepening tensions among the major G20 countries. Importantly, India declared early on its intention to represent the concerns and aspirations of the Global South and the proposal to invite the African Union (AU) was part of this effort.

India succeeded in mobilising a consensus to admit the AU into the G20 at the very first of the three sessions.