Though the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is trying its level best to politically capitalise thehosting of the G-20 chairmanship of India, the truth is that New Delhi had to do a lot of tight-ropewalking in the meetings of Finance Ministers and the governors of the central banks of the membercountries held in Bangalore between February 22 and 25 as well as of Foreign Ministers which tookplace in the National Capital on March 1-2.
Both of them ended without the release of joint communique. They were marred by unpleasantdevelopments over Ukraine conflict.While the western countries kept insisting on using the word war, Russia and China wanted theexpression crisis to be used. India was caught in a bind and no joint communique could be released.
Ironically, the paragraphs three and four of the Bali Declaration of G-20 State Leaders Summit lastNovember condemned the aggression in Ukraine and called for the withdrawal of Russian forces. But whenthese two paragraphs were referred to in the joint communique in Bangalore and New Delhi, Russia andChina stiffly resisted the western countries.
What is more, China protested on the way QUAD Foreign Ministers met in New Delhi on March 3 that isjust a day after the G-20 Foreign Ministers meet. Beijing questioned the coming up of exclusionaryblocs. Along with Russia, it is of the view that G-20 is an organisation formed to discuss the tradeand economic issues of the member countries, which account for 85 per cent of the global GDP, 75 percent of trade and two-thirds of population.
The QUAD Foreign Ministers meeting was held under the chairmanship of Indian External AffairsMinister, S Jaishankar. The three other members are the United States, Australia and Japan.
Interestingly, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi arrived especially for QUAD meet when thefact is that he sent his Minister of State to attend the G-20 meet which concluded just a day earlier.Similarly, his South Korean counterpart was absent from G-20 meet and the country was represented byjunior minister.
Though both Japan and South Korea cited domestic compulsion as a reason for skipping it, their movesuggests the importance they gave to G-20. In fact, more significance was attached to QUAD by Japanwhen there was little scope for any such get-together on this occasion.
If the same trend continues and the war in Ukraine does not end, it would not be easy for India, thecurrent chairman, to manage the contradictions within when the state leaders of the G-20 Summit meeton September 9-10, 2023.
Curiously, India is by rotation not only the chairman of G-20 but also of Shanghai CooperationOrganisation, whose meeting is to be held in India in summer this year.
While G-20 and even QUAD is essentially a western dominated organisation, the Shanghai CooperationOrganisation, as the name suggests, has strong Chinese as well as Russian influence. So, on theinternational plain India will have to do a lot of balancing act throughout this year.
If many in India are relieved that the Foreign Ministers of the United States andRussia,Anthony Blinken and Sergey Lavrov met briefly (said to be for 10 minutes) on the occasion of the meeting, it is tobe seen whether Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin come face to face in September or not. In theBali Summit of G-20 held in Novemberlast year, Putin did not turn up. He only sent his Foreign Minister.
On the other hand, President Zi Jinping is most likely to attend the SCO and G-20 Summit in New Delhi.If this so happens, it would be the first such visit by Chinese President after the border tusslebetween the two Himalayan neighbours in June 2020 in which India lost 20 of its soldiers. After theBali Summit in November, Chinese army intruded into Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh in Decemberlast. If the US intelligence report is to be believed, there is possibility of further confrontationbetween China and India.
It was on India’s insistence that it got the chance to hold the G-20 in 2023, that is just a yearbefore the 2024 parliamentary election in the country. According to the media reports, the idea is to project before the voters that India has become a worldleader (Vishwa Guru) when the fact is that India got this privilege on the basis of rotation. Evenmuch smaller Indonesia chaired it in 2022 and nobody boasted about its holding there.
In fact, member-countries usually get this opportunity on the rotational basis. By that logic India has not got any preference as it is holding the 18th such state-leaders meet since the first one washeld in 2008.
It is a known fact that normally issues like war are taken up by the United Nations Security Counciland not by any multi-lateral body. By that logic the western invasions in Libya, Iraq, Syria andAfghanistan should have also been raised in the previous G-20 Summits. But since the United States andits West European friends do not want to miss any opportunity to corner Russia as well as China, theyare using this platform.
India, which has started buying cheap Russian oil after the start of Ukraine war, has a very goodrelationship with the West, too. Russia has in the past always stood behind New Delhi on the issue ofJammu and Kashmir and is the largest seller of arms to India. In 1971, Moscow openly stood behind NewDelhi while Washington sent its warship in Bay of Bengal at the height of India-Pakistan War inDecember that year.
The challenge before India is that China, a major power in the region, is strongly backing Russia.This is not the first time that such complex situation had emerged on the international scene. Theproblem with India is that the present establishment wants to make a political capital of these globaldevelopments when there is little scope for it.