A person walks previous a wall mural of Humayun’s Tomb beneath the brand of the Group of 20 summit, in New Delhi on Jan. 4.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP through Getty Photographs
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Sajjad Hussain/AFP through Getty Photographs
A person walks previous a wall mural of Humayun’s Tomb beneath the brand of the Group of 20 summit, in New Delhi on Jan. 4.
Sajjad Hussain/AFP through Getty Photographs
India is basking in its function as host of this week’s G-20 international ministers’ summit, however hoping its agenda does not get dominated by the Ukraine struggle.
As president of the Group of 20 (G-20) main economies, India needs to steer the agenda for Wednesday’s summit begin towards priorities for the Global South: local weather change, meals safety, inflation and debt aid.
Three of India’s neighbors — Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh — are searching for pressing loans from the Worldwide Financial Fund, as growing international locations particularly battle with rising world gas and meals costs.
However these costs have been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and tensions over the struggle threaten to overshadow all the things else.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Russian International Minister Sergey Lavrov and their Chinese language counterpart, Qin Gang, are all anticipated to attend the two-day assembly in New Delhi.
Final July, Lavrov walked out of a previous G-20 international ministers’ assembly in Indonesia, after Western delegates denounced the Ukraine struggle. Final April, at one other G-20 assembly, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and representatives from different Western nations walked out when Russia spoke.
India’s G-20 presidency comes when it feels ascendant
Final yr, India’s economic system turned the fifth-largest in the world, surpassing that of its former colonial occupier, Britain. Any day now, India is expected to surpass China because the world’s most populous nation. (Some say it is occurred already.) Its development this yr is predicted to be the strongest among the many world’s large economies.
The G-20 presidency is a rotating function: Indonesia had it last year, and Brazil hosts subsequent. However Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s authorities has sought to bill it — no less than to a home viewers — as a private achievement by the prime minister, as he runs for reelection subsequent yr.
Billboards with Modi’s face and India’s G-20 brand — which is very similar to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party’s own logo — have gone up throughout India. In current weeks, freeway flyovers in Mumbai and New Delhi have been festooned with flower packing containers. Lampposts bought a contemporary coat of paint.
And slum-dwellers have been evicted from informal settlements alongside roads within the capital the place dignitaries’ motorcades are touring this week.
Apart from its concentrate on financial points most related to growing international locations, another excuse India needs to steer the agenda away from Ukraine is that it has maintained ties with Russia despite the war. Modi has known as for a cease-fire however has thus far refused to sentence Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. And India continues to buy oil and weapons from Moscow.
However at an identical G-20 finance ministers’ assembly final week, Yellen accused Russian officers in attendance of being “complicit” in atrocities in Ukraine and within the ensuing injury to the worldwide economic system.
That assembly, held Feb. 22-25 close to the southern Indian metropolis of Bengaluru, ended with out a last joint communique being issued. And analysts have cast doubt on whether or not this week’s international ministers’ assembly would possibly finish any in a different way.
