25 Aug 2022 India as first time president of G20
Mains GS Paper 2: Important International Institutions, agencies and fora – their Structure, Mandate.
News: India is going to assume for the first time the Group of 20 (G20) year-long presidency from December 1, 2022 to November 30, 2023, culminating with the G20 Summit in India in 2023.
What is G20 or Group of Twenty?
- The G20 or Group of Twenty is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union (EU). It works to address major issues related to the global economy, such as international financial stability, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development.
- The G20 membership represents nearly 90% of the world’s GDP, 80% of global trade, and 67% of the planet’s population.
- It is an advisory body, not a treaty-based forum and, therefore, its decisions are recommendations to its own members.
- The forum was elevated from the finance ministers to the heads of government/state in 2008.
- G20 was formed when G8 (United States, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan , Russia up to 2014 when Russia was suspended),realizes that they needed to work together with the emerging economies in defining global challenges and crafting their solutions.
Importance of G20:
- G20 membership carries enormous political and economic influence due to representation of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, tWorld Health Organization, and other multilateral institutions in it.
- G20 has played a vital role in addressing financial and economic challenges such as the global financial crisis of 2008-09 and the Eurozone crisis of 2010.
Recent issues faced by G20:
- G20 forum faced an existential crisis, in its second decade when major powers have fallen out.
- Recent currents of geopolitics due to the disastrous impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine, India-China border tensions, EU/U.S.-Russia hostility, and deteriorating U.S.-China relations made the future of multilateral cooperation uncertain.
Challenges India may face after assuming G20 presidency
- Combine an India-focused view.
- Promote the vital interests of the Global South.
- Demonstrate diplomatic acumen to communicate.
- Reconcile the viewpoints of rival and adversarial power centers such as the West, Russia, and China.
Opportunities for India after G20 presidency:
- India can provide evidence of its domestic successes such as ability to combat COVID-19 effectively at home and abroad through vaccine aid and diplomacy, digital revolution, steady progress in switching to renewables, meeting its targets to counter climate change, and push for self-reliance in manufacturing and reshaping global value chains etc for global adoption.
- G20 presidency can also be utilized to transform India’s sub-optimal physical infrastructure to create an attractive investment and tourism destination, as several important G20 meetings will be hosted outside Delhi.
- India can showcase new trends in entrepreneurship, business innovation, the rise of many start-ups as unicorns, and gender progress .
- Rare opportunity for synergy and solidarity to advance the interests of the developing world and to assert their combined leadership of the Global South as four democracies on the path to becoming powerful economic players — Indonesia, India, Brazil, and South Africa — hold the presidency from December 2021 to November 2025.
- G20 presidency may provide India to act as the chief global diplomat as the G20 president, India has to synthesize divergent interests of all constituents of the forum such as five permanent members of the UN Security Council,G7 members,BRICS, other G20 members such as Argentina and Mexico.
Way forward:
- India should factor in the perspectives of countries not represented in the G20.
- India should promote an inclusive approach, with pragmatic and human-centric solutions to global issues.
- India should play a role in ending Africa’s marginalisation by elevating the African Union (AU) from permanent observer to a full-fledged member of the G20, thus placing it on a par with the EU.
Source: The Hindu
Source Link:
- The Hindu:-https://bit.ly/3L2V6yl ; Author Name: Rajiv Bhatia
Yojna IAS daily current affairs eng med 25th August
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