India raising the bar with Global South

This year, there are some scheduled meetings like BRICS, ASEAN and EAS which India will attend and use to complement its G20 presidency. What is significant is the effort to go beyond this in a year and reach out to CARICOM, SICA, Central Asia, the Pacific Islands and Africa. This will be a real follow-up of the ‘Voice of Global South’ summit. In the past, India has had these interactions which bolstered India’s image as a dependable development partner of the Global South.

Gurjit Singh
Former Ambassador

INDIA’s initiative to engage with the Global South and voice its aspirations and priorities during its G20 presidency is gaining momentum. Beginning with the ‘Voice of Global South’ summit held virtually in January, efforts to strengthen ties with the institutions that India established with the Global South over the decades are underway. These are a follow-up to the results of the January summit and the subsequent G20 meetings held so far.

India’s position as a leader of the Global South is buttressed by its multifarious dealings with regions and regional organisations. With India at the helm of G20, the presidency is being used to enhance the engagement rather than let preoccupation with it delay meetings further. For practical purposes, efforts are now not focused on summits with the Prime Minister alone; some are conducted at the level of the External Affairs Minister (EAM) or the Vice-President.

With ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), India has an annual ministerial meeting and summit; it will continue this year.

Indonesia, as the ASEAN chair, has advanced the ‘ASEAN Plus One’ meeting and the East Asia Summit to early September from November to facilitate the participation of global leaders in the G20 summit in India. The ASEAN-India summit can also be held at that time. The ASEAN-India foreign ministers’ meeting will take place prior to that.

The forum to engage the Pacific Island states will have a meeting in Papua New Guinea in May. Such meetings took place in 2014 and 2015, followed by a meeting around the time when the UN General Assembly was held in 2019. This was, perhaps, overdue, given the growing importance of the South Pacific countries.

With Central Asia, an informal meeting may take place since all Central Asian countries other than Turkmenistan are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), whose summit will take place in July in India. The last India-Central Asia Summit was held virtually in January 2022.

The BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in South Africa in June will add heft to these consultations because India would also use the occasion to continue its efforts to revive the trilateral engagement under IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa). The BRICS summit is slated for August in Durban, South Africa.

Latin America is a neglected region in India’s engagement. On April 21, the EAM started his nine-day visit to Guyana, Panama, Colombia and the Dominican Republic. Besides the bilateral talks in Guyana, which is hosting the secretariat of the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the EAM met the foreign ministers of CARICOM in the India-COFCOR format, the ministerial forum of CARICOM.

In Panama, besides the bilateral meetings, the EAM will meet representatives from the eight-country Central American Integration System (SICA), thus engaging with both the Caribbean and Central America. This opportunity for ministerial discussions with Latin American and Caribbean nations in the post-pandemic period and during the G20 presidency is timely. Jaishankar had also met the CARICOM foreign ministers on the sidelines of the UNGA in 2022.

The largest of the regional engagements is with Africa. The last India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS-III) was held in 2015; it has not been held since partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic and disruption of the African Union’s calendar of summits and partly due to scheduling issues.

Despite being busy with the G20 and SCO summits this year, India now seems ready to have the IAFS-IV in an African country. The EAM recently visited Uganda and Mozambique. Uganda is the new chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in which India is evincing great interest. The relationship with the African Union Commission (AUC), which had slowed down, is now being revitalised.

During the year, there are some scheduled annual meetings, such as the BRICS, ASEAN and the East Asia Summit (EAS), which India will attend and use to complement its G20 presidency. What is significant is the effort to go beyond this in a diplomatically busy year and also reach out to CARICOM, SICA, Central Asia, the Pacific Islands and Africa.

This will be a real follow-up to the ‘Voice of Global South’ summit. In the past, India has had these interactions that have bolstered India’s image as a dependable development partner of the Global South.

Rejuvenating many dormant relationships and overcoming the hiatus caused by the pandemic-enforced lockdowns, India has stepped up efforts to revive regional relationships.

In these meetings, the focus will be on pursuing the G20 agenda and not allowing the Ukraine crisis to entirely hijack the G20, especially during India’s presidency. Therefore, the articulation of priorities by consultations with the regional institutions of the Global South and engaging with them more robustly provide the bridge which India will need to cross and ensure that the G20 actually reflects what is truly important while putting the Ukraine war into a box, at which some of the G20 countries may continue to quibble.

While dealing with these regions, issues such as climate change, reshaping the UN and multilateral banks, financing for development of green and blue economies and prioritising South’s preferences take centre stage.

India is re-evaluating its development cooperation efforts. These are now becoming more strategic than overarching. The era of line of credit being liberally offered to regional institutions and their members has now ceased. India has given about $32 billion in soft loans to developing countries across the globe. However, with debt stress, rising interest rates and problems of rescheduling and repayment, line of credit is no more an effective method for development cooperation that it once was. Therefore, India now seeks greater strategic coherence, private sector engagement and FDI-led growth, supported by grants to catalyse processes, particularly towards skilling, development of information and communication technology and innovation and implementation of sustainable development goals.