TRIUMPHS AND TRIALS

India delivered a common global vision at a time of deep fractures, continued to navigate and leverage great power competition; but it also faced serious global challenges

- Prashant Jha

To get a sense of how Indian foreign policy evolved over the year, examine New Delhi's approach to G20, the biggest multilateral process and event of 2023; its relationships with T the great powers (US, Russia and China); its treatment of the immediate and extended neighbourhood (south, southeast and West Asia); and its role in the global south, the wide descriptor for the poor and developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The examination throws up a report card where India scores high marks on most fronts. But it also gives a sense of areas of weakness where, unless Indian diplomacy does its homework more rigorously and collaborates with the right actors at the right time, unanticipated questions can interrupt its progress to the next stage.

A year of accomplishments

Leading a bloc of the world's 20 most powerful economies by turn, in itself, is not an accomplishment. But transforming the nature of the grouping by democratising its agenda and participation, ensuring a common declaration when members of the group are, literally and figuratively, at war with each other, and positioning itself as the voice of the global south, is.

That is what India did in 2023 with its G20 presidency, scoring a win in its quest to push an agenda of reformed multilateralism. Holding G20 meetings outside the Capital may have been a part of the domestic political recalibration where foreign policy achievements are used as a tool of electoral mobilisation, but it did create a sense of ownership in a process that was largely handled by technocrats. It also exposed the world's elite to an India outside Delhi. Convening two voice of the global south summits and getting the African Union into the group gave India greater legitimacy to speak for the developing world and present an alternative to China's predatory models of outreach.