India Can Still Be a Bridge to the Global South

Since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, India has refused to take sides in what it views as essentially a power struggle between the East and West. New Delhi has instead opted to walk the middle path: preserving its time-tested relations with Moscow, seeking to improve relations with Beijing, and strengthening relations with Washington and Tokyo. More than a few times, the challenge of balancing Russia and the United States has nearly jolted India from its tightrope.

India’s middle-path approach has gained greater relevance and urgency with its leadership of the G-20 this year. This week, the group’s foreign ministers gathered in New Delhi. Speaking at the start of the meeting on Thursday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lamented the state of multilateralism: “Global governance has failed,” he said, citing issues including financial crisis, climate change, the pandemic, and terrorism.

India takes the mantle of G-20 leadership from Indonesia; it will be followed by Brazil and then South Africa in 2024 and 2025, respectively. This period of leadership presents an opportunity for the countries of the global south at a time when tensions between great powers threaten to undermine the G-20. But the outcome may also depend on the G-7 group of developed economies, led this year by India’s new friend Japan.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine more than a year ago, India has refused to take sides in what it views as essentially a power struggle between the East and West. New Delhi has instead opted to walk the middle path: preserving its time-tested relations with Moscow, seeking to improve relations with Beijing, and strengthening relations with Washington and Tokyo. More than a few times, the challenge of balancing Russia and the United States has nearly jolted India from its tightrope.

India’s middle-path approach has gained greater relevance and urgency with its leadership of the G-20 this year. This week, the group’s foreign ministers gathered in New Delhi. Speaking at the start of the meeting on Thursday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lamented the state of multilateralism: “Global governance has failed,” he said, citing issues including financial crisis, climate change, the pandemic, and terrorism.

India takes the mantle of G-20 leadership from Indonesia; it will be followed by Brazil and then South Africa in 2024 and 2025, respectively. This period of leadership presents an opportunity for the countries of the global south at a time when tensions between great powers threaten to undermine the G-20. But the outcome may also depend on the G-7 group of developed economies, led this year by India’s new friend Japan.

This year, Modi has leaned on New Delhi’s long-standing policy of nonalignment, first embraced by founding father Jawaharlal Nehru and creatively rephrased as “multi-alignment” by current Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar. Multi-alignment, according to Jaishankar, is “more energetic and participative.” India currently balances its memberships in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, alongside Russia and China, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (known as the Quad) with Australia, Japan, and the United States.

The G-20 has become an important forum for India, which remains marginal to the decision-making systems of most multilateral organizations, including the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. Last year, India’s leaders watched as Indonesia had to work hard to ensure that the fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine did not derail the annual G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. This year, New Delhi aims to take the G-20 in a new direction—as well as to cement its status as the leader of the global south, as it saw itself under Nehru.

With a virtual meeting of nearly 125 developing countries at the start of the year (called “Voice of Global South”), India set a new focus for the G-20’s annual summit in New Delhi in September. The summit will aim to concentrate on far-reaching challenges that concern the global south, such as economic recovery, access to COVID-19 vaccines, climate justice, and terrorism. India hopes to present itself as a bridge power that seeks a new deal for the global south, but it remains to be seen how much support it has for its aspirations: Not many heads of government tuned in to hear Modi speak during the virtual meeting.

Jaishankar said at the G-20 summit, India aims to confront obstacles posed by bad economic headwinds—especially the global south’s debt burden—and to address issues of energy and food insecurity, which have increased as a result of the war in Ukraine. These concerns seek the attention of the G-7 economies, but Jaishankar also seemed to send a message to both Russia and China in his comments, saying the summit in New Delhi would “[a]ssert the primacy of rule of law, respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, and relying on diplomacy to resolve differences.”

On the global stage, India has adopted a tough posture on climate change by asserting the right to economic development and on COVID-19 cooperation by seeking exemption from intellectual property rights protections for vaccines against the virus. These positions have attracted considerable support, and Indian officials have echoed them in preparation for the G-20 summit. “We will call for equity for the global south,” Indian Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya told reporters in January.

India is likely to place significant emphasis on debt relief for developing economies, and Modi recently expressed concern that unsustainable debt threatens many countries’ “financial viability.” During the Cold War, countries in the global south were able to secure greater development aid from major economies, given Western concern about communist influence. In the 1990s, the World Trade Organization was constructed so as to give special and differential treatment to countries in the global south.

These gains have withered away as wealthy countries have reduced assistance, imposed trade conditionalities, and sought to reverse globalization processes. In this context, India should seek consensus on a few concrete measures to help the global south—to be continued by Brazil and South Africa as its G-20 president successors. A sustained focus on debt relief, reduction in global inflation, access to affordable medicine, and climate justice would make India a credible leader of the global south.

To start, the G-20 should agree to sovereign debt restructuring for least-developed and emerging economies dealing with large debt burdens, just as the group stepped in to create mechanisms that helped bail out Western economies after the 2008 financial crisis. Global inflation caused by both U.S. policy and Russia’s war in Ukraine make this particularly urgent. The G-20 should also support the United Nations’ recommendation to create a Sovereign Debt Workout Institution to implement debt restructuring.

Under India’s leadership, the G-20 should also call on developed economies to increase their contribution to climate finance to help the global south, beyond the $100 billion agreed to at the annual U.N. climate change conference (known as COP27) last November, known as COP27. Existing climate commitments still aren’t adequate to meet the needs of emerging economies. This would echo global south-led efforts at COP27 to provide so-called loss and damage funding for especially vulnerable countries.

Next, the G-20 should declare a waiver of intellectual property rights protection for vaccines against COVID-19 and its variants. The group should also agree to price controls on life-saving drugs, especially during crises. Although the pandemic has receded, securing this demand would set a precedent for future global health challenges. Access to affordable medicine and health care remains a major concern in the global south. India’s record in low-cost pharmaceuticals manufacturing and affordable health care would allow it to make a powerful case against Big Pharma.

Finally, the G-20 should agree to revitalize multilateralism in trade, including by extending the World Trade Organization’s special and differential treatment facility, which allows for some tariff protection and a more gradual tariff reduction for developing economies compared to developed economies. (The principle first came under threat while former U.S. President Donald Trump was in office.) As Russia’s war in Ukraine has heightened food security concerns, the G-20 should also agree on a policy for public stockholding and price support to farmers in developing economies, especially for the grain market.

If just these four points were agreed to at the G-20 summit in New Delhi later this year, then it would mark a major turning point for the group, which has not had much to show for its global leadership lately. With India at the helm, the time has come for the G-20 to help the global south in a dramatic fashion.

This essay is published in cooperation with the Asian Peace Programme at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute.