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G20 summit: What to look for over the next two days

The 18th edition on September 9-10 has the theme: 'One Earth, One Family, One Future'

After months of preparatory meetings spread across all of India’s 28 states and eight federally administered territories – the moment of reckoning is finally here. Leaders of the world’s economically most developed countries and those with growing economic clout have arrived in New Delhi for the 18th G20 summit on September 9-10 that has as its theme: 'One Earth, One Family, One Future'.

On Saturday, the first day of the summit, there will be two sessions among the leaders with time set aside for bilateral meetings. The negotiations are expected to continue over lunch and also over dinner that President of India, Droupadi Murmu will be hosting. Capping off the evening will be a cultural show, expected to dazzle spectators with its colourful vibrancy.

Sunday, the second day of the summit, starts with a visit to Rajghat – the memorial to India’s freedom icon Mahatma Gandhi -- by the visiting leaders. Then the leaders gather for the third and last G20 session. A joint New Delhi declaration is still a possibility, before Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially hands over the G20 presidency to Brazil. A few bilateral meetings among the visiting leaders are also to be held on Sunday.

All the G20 Summits that have taken place since 2008 have produced a joint communique’ or a unanimous statement of action by the G20 leaders.

So, will the New Delhi summit have a joint statement of action or not?

From all accounts, senior officials of the G20 countries – the G20 sherpas – have not been able to arrive at a consensus document, mainly on account of differences over Ukraine. While the Western bloc within G20 demand strong language to describe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia and China oppose this strenuously. Efforts have been on to break the deadlock – Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Indonesia this week as the European Union said the Indian text on Ukraine did not go far enough.

Should the New Delhi G20 Summit not result in a joint communique, would mean it was a failure? With Russian president Vladmir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping being absent, can these be the determinants of the lack of success?

Perhaps a fairer approach would be to measure the takeaways – in critical areas.

For one, India’s proposal to get in the African Union (AU) as a member of the G20, is expected to come through. This means that the 54 member continent – comprising a bulk of the Global South -- gets a seat at the G20 high table.

Second, a deal on the use of digital public infrastructure (DPI) for financial inclusion using the Indian template as a model is possible. This would be a key win for India as New Delhi has been holding up its homegrown open-source identity platform, that has been successfully used to deliver a wide variety of government and private services to a majority of its 1.4 billion people. This has been done without any leakage or corruption bedeviling the endeavour. All G20 members are said to be in agreement with the G20 Financial Inclusion Action Plan 2024-26. This could go a long way in addressing poverty in a targeted fashion in countries of the Global South.

A third crucial area of agreement is expected on a framework to reform, strengthen and restructure multilateral development banks (MDBs), make them more responsive to the needs of developing countries (read the Global South). An expert group set up by India, led by former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and a former senior Indian bureaucrat NK Singh, submitted its first report on the subject in July, with a second report due in October.

Agreement among G20 members for a bigger push to meet the Sustainable Development Goals -- that target poverty and other deprivations while improving health and education, reducing inequality and spurring economic growth – is also one of the takeaways anticipated. Again, this keeps the developing countries in focus.

Unanimity has been reported among G20 members on ways to finance green fuels and share technologies related to cleaner fuels with the developing world.

There could be other takeaways too.

Should these make their way into a document known as “the chair’s summary.” issued by India (in the absence of a joint communique), they could be the determinants a successful summit.

A unanimous text has its merits – it shows cohesion within the G20 unlike other multilateral fora that are seen as broken or dysfunctional. But G20 members and others are not bound to follow the text though it gives out templates that can be followed.

The East-West differences over Ukraine have become too sharp to be bridged, plaguing whoever hosted the 2023 G20 Summit. Against this backdrop, a summit bridging the North-South divide, with significant takeaways for the Global South can be a measure of successful multilateral diplomacy. It is to India’s credit that it set the focus on the Global South early on in its G20 presidency and continues to persevere to achieve results despite the challenges posed by the East-West divisions.

Elizabeth Roche is a professor of International Relations at the Jindal Global University, India. The views expressed are her own.

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