Opportunities and challenges of India’s G20 presidency – POLITICO

Mohit Anand is a professor of international business and strategy at the EMLYON Business School in France.

The G20 summit that concluded in Bali last month provided the world’s leading economies with a platform to hear and be heard on global issues.

The core purpose of the G20 has always been to recognize the importance of collective action and inclusive collaboration among major developed countries and emerging economies around the world. And as a leading multilateral platform, it holds a strategic role in securing future global economic growth and prosperity, as its members represent over 85 percent of global GDP, 75 percent of global trade and two-thirds of the world’s population.

India assumed the G20 presidency in December and, not surprisingly, the ongoing Ukraine conflict, the COVID-19 recovery and global economic stability will all continue to be part of the major discourse for 2023. While at the helm of framing the platform’s priorities, however, New Delhi now has the chance to play an important role in shaping and strengthening global architecture and governance on all major international economic issues.

The war in Ukraine and its implications — including food and energy security — figured particularly highly in the talks in Bali. However, as expected, no diplomatic headway was made to arrive at a substantive breakthrough, despite the fact that most countries deplore Russia’s aggression, which is causing immense human suffering and exasperating existing fragilities in the global economy — constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening food and energy insecurity and elevating financial stability risks.

From a geopolitical perspective, this means India could take the opportunity to leverage its historical and amenable ties with Russia, and bring a more isolated Moscow to the discussion and diplomacy roundtable of over 200 G20 meetings to follow. It could use its platform to address the Ukraine conflict, strategizing for peace and a path toward reconciliation as much as possible. After all, the G20 communique that “today’s era must not be of war” echoes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message to Russian President Vladimir Putin from just a few months ago.

And while it’s recognized that the G20 isn’t necessarily the forum to resolve security issues, it’s evolved into a leading platform for economic cooperation. Such matters still have significant consequences for the global economy. Hence, it’s incumbent upon the G20 to address these issues as much as possible, particularly when the U.N. and other bilateral interventions have failed to diffuse the conflict.

This is another way in which India’s role can be critical, as it can reflect upon the hits and misses of the Bali summit and learn how to make this multilateral forum more relevant. And even though the Ukraine conflict, coupled with heightening geopolitical tensions due to the rise of an assertive China, will test India’s leadership and its ability to revive the G20’s credibility in an otherwise declining era of multilateralism, New Delhi aspires to a presidency…