The Learnings For India From Its G20 Journey

It is tempting to focus on what hasn't happened during India's G20 presidency.

- Prashant Jha

Delhi hasn't been able to get all 20 leaders to the Summit; think of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin's absence this weekend. The likelihood of delivering a joint communique is bleak; think of Russia and China backtracking from even the agreed-upon language around the war in Ukraine at the last summit in Bali and the fact that all ministerials had to settle for a chair summary and outcome statement. The Summit is unlikely to reshape global order in a manner that is more representative of the concerns of the world's poorer countries; think of where ues to reside in every single international institution or the failure of the West to move on climate finance.

Critics may say that the government is itself partially to blame for the focus on what it has been unable to achieve, because it chose to convert the Summit into a political campaign fest and a part of the Prime Minister's domestic brand-building exercise. But as tempting as this may be for critics, it is analytically limiting. At a broader level, what matters is what India was able to do and what it has learnt about the world in the course of its presidency. And this holds true irrespective of the nature of the final outcome this weekend.

For the first time, Indian diplomacy found itself at the centre of navigating every faultline that permeates the international order. And this has been an education in itself, from which five lessons stand out.