AIR Spotlight: India’s Priority Areas at 17th G20 Summit

AIR Spotlight is an insightful program featured daily on the All India Radio Newsonair. In this program, many eminent panellists discuss issues of importance which can be quite helpful in IAS exam preparation.

This article is about the discussion on the ‘India’s Priority Areas at 17th G20 Summit’. 

Participants:

• Veena Sikri, Former Diplomat 
• Lalima Aneja Dang, AIR Correspondent

Context:

• India’s Prime Minister attended the 17th G20 summit being held in Bali.
• India is scheduled to take over the presidency of G20 for the next year.

Significance of the G20 and India’s presidency:

• G20 holds immense significance in addressing some of the pressing global challenges in the face of the failure of multilateral organizations like the UN to address them. Hence it is gaining increasing importance in international relations.
• G20 with a more representative membership, would be able to cater to the needs of developing countries in a more effective manner. This will provide a platform for such countries to play a significant role in policy making.
• G20 apart from addressing its core focus areas like global economy and financial stability, has diversified to address other subjects such as climate change, energy and food security, women empowerment and global security.
• The G20 presidency will provide India with an opportunity to host the summit meeting in New Delhi and 200 other meetings with member countries. This provides India with an opportunity to understand the policies of other countries as well as to articulate its own stand to other countries. This will help India set the agenda going forward and take up a leadership role in international relations.
• India is also planning to invite non-G20 countries like the UAE, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Singapore, Spain, Egypt, and Mauritius among others. Also regional organizations like ASEAN and African Union would be invited apart from the participation of international organizations like the WHO, UN, etc. This will help expand the influence of G20 in international relations and also the implementability of its decisions.
• India’s experience in digital empowerment of its citizens would be a valuable learning lesson for the other developing economies. India can also gain from technological support in the field of clean technology from developed economies in its green energy transition efforts.

Challenges:

• G20 represents about 2/3rd of the global population. This raises questions about its limited membership.
• There are also doubts over the lack of enforcement powers of the G20.

Read previous AIR Spotlight articles in the link.

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