Date: 17/01/2023

Relevance: GS-2: Groupings & Agreements Involving India and/or Affecting India's Interests; Effect of Policies & Politics of Countries on India's Interests

Key Phrases: Voice Of The Global South Summit, Aarogya Maitri, Coordinated Strategy For Emerging Economies, Global South Science And Technology, Global South Centre Of Excellence For Research

Why in the News?

• The Voice of the Global South summit that Delhi convened last week did not produce any spectacular outcomes it was not supposed to.
• The forum, however, marks an important effort by India to make global governance work for developing nations, whose concerns tend to get minimal attention in international forums.

Voice of the Global South Summit:

• The Voice of the Global South Summit, a unique endeavour started by the Indian government after it assumed the G20 presidency, was recently held in India.
• The summit’s goal was to launch a brand new and enthusiastic approach to realpolitik, while also providing a coordinated strategy for emerging economies.
• The forum is also about India reconnecting with a global group of nations that had fallen off the Indian foreign policy radar since the end of the Cold War.
• Leaders from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Guyana, Mozambique, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Senegal, Thailand, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam attended the conference.

Relevance of the Summit:

• The virtual forum has provided valuable inputs from the Global South that could facilitate India’s ambition to steer the G20 summit in Delhi to success later this year.
• India emphasised that developing countries should work together to restructure global political and financial governance so that they are not excluded from advancement, and can eliminate disparities.

The North-South divide

• The system of economic, political, and social differences between the developed nations of the Northern Hemisphere and the parts of the developing world of the Southern Hemisphere is known as the global North-South divide.
• The global North-South divide has serious consequences for global development and poverty alleviation. The bulk of the world's poor live in the South, and reducing this disparity is critical to meeting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
• To eliminate poverty and encourage development in the South, the global economic system must evolve toward more justice and fairness. This may be accomplished through a variety of measures, including increasing aid and investment in the South.

Need for a Global South Leadership: Why Now?

• The goal of the present summit, which has the theme “Unity of Voice, Unity of Purpose,” is to bring together nations from the global south to discuss a wide variety of topics from their points of view and objectives. The summit’s timing reveals a lot about the purpose of the alliance.
• The need for a new international order that is more inclusive, representational, and fundamentally more stable has been supported by various events like
• Growing military tensions among the great powers between Russia and China on one side and the US, Europe and Japan on the other.
  • Breakdown of the world trading rules and the weaponisation of global finance.
  • COVID-19 epidemic
  • Increasing Chinese expectations
  • The Russia-Ukraine conflict
  • The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and various other events.
• The Global South Summit aims to give voice to that endeavour and help in making the transformations manifest.

India Reclaiming Leadership of Developing World:

• Over the last three decades, Indian diplomacy’s focus has been on reordering its great power relations, bringing stability to the neighbourhood and developing regional institutions in the extended neighbourhood.
• The meeting attended by 120 nations underlines the willingness across the Global South to support Indian leadership in addressing the global challenges that have had a massive impact on the condition of many developing countries.
• While the future of this particular forum is not clear, the idea that India must reclaim the leadership of the developing world appears to have gained much currency during the forum.
• India thus, plans to reorient the G20, take charge of the Global South and become the voice of developing economies across the world.

Challenges in Representing Collective Interests of Global South:

• Representing the presumed collective interests of the Global South has become harder today given the deep economic differentiation and sharp political divisions among the developing nations.
• India’s own experience with the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group-77 developing nations points to the real difficulty of uniting the Global South in pursuit of common goals.
• India’s own enduring developmental challenges, despite its impressive aggregate GDP and growing economic, industrial, and technological capabilities

Way Ahead:

• Given the size of its population, transforming India towards greater prosperity and sustainable development would automatically improve the condition of the Global South.
• Yet, a large nation and rising power like India can’t simply be self-centred nor should it abandon its long-standing equities in the Global South.
• India certainly needs to contribute in more significant ways in modernisation and democratization of the global order.
• It needs a careful balance between nationalism and internationalism, a practical sense of what is feasible in today’s world, and a well-defined crafted hierarchy of Indian priorities on the global stage.

Source: Indian Express

Mains Question:

Q. Discuss the role India can play in building a new international order that is more inclusive, representational, and fundamentally more stable. (150 words)