Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Arindam Bagchi confirmed to media on Thursday that New Delhi has not made any changes to the list of invitees to the G20 summit scheduled to take place in the Indian capital on September 9-10.
This means that Ukraine is not on the list, despite the country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, leading desperate efforts to get on it: as expected, Zelensky wanted to woo non-Western nations, including India and China, to back his "peace formula".
While India has been hesitant to invite Zelensky to the country, a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin was spotted among the list of G20 leaders for the New Delhi summit on the official website. India previously made it clear that it would continue to work with Russia within the G20 and in other formats. Their bilateral relations are underpinned by trade and economic exchange — no matter how hard the US has been trying to lure India away from Russia.
Moscow, for its part, hinted that Putin's participation in the summit is not ruled out, noting that unlike the G7, the group of twenty more genuinely reflects the current state of global affairs, wherein developing nations are coming to the fore.
Ukraine Doesn't Fit Into G20's Main Focus
Since assuming the G20 presidency this year, India has made it clear that its primary agenda for 2023 is raising the voice of the Global South. This basically means that European issues, including geopolitical tensions and economic recession — though certainly affecting countries worldwide to some extent — are not the major concern for the developing world.
In June, India's Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar gave Europeans some food for thought when he suggested they should stop trying to project their own issues onto other countries.
What are the exact priorities for the G20 set by India this year? The list below goes far beyond primarily European concerns:
food and energy security;
availability of food, fertilizers and fuel;
climate change and sustainable development;
debt burden and inflation in developing nations;
clean energy and sustainable energy transition;
female-led development.
To put it short, the main objective is for India to make the G20 agenda more inclusive, meaning interests and concerns of all states, particularly those which are most vulnerable, should be taken into account. This was underpinned by PM Narendra Modi at the Voice of the Global South Summit in January.
At the same time, India's G20 presidency presents a perfect opportunity to showcase the nation's advances in digital infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, and defense.
Global South to the Foreground
Russian officials have pointed out that the Ukraine crisis has actually accelerated the transition to a multipolar world order, in which not only India, Russia and China, but also non-western nations of Asia and Africa are starting to form the agenda.
This has been made possible to a large extent by sanctions and restrictions initiated by the West, which basically pushed countries unwilling to lose the mutually-beneficial trade and economic ties with Russia to foster cooperation that is not tied to the US financial and trade mechanisms.
India's Take on Changing World System
In this vast landscape, India is trying to officially become a leader of the Global South, which is witnessed through its active and multi-faceted efforts to build strong partnerships not only in the Indo-Pacific, but also with the African continent.
India's policies aimed at attaining self-sufficiency and replacing foreign products with 'Make in India' items (what has become known as indigenization) are, in fact, in line with the overall attempts of rising economies to break away from the now ineffective world order created after World War II, which the West continuously tries to impose on them.
In this regard, India's idea of 'reformed multilateralism' is something that goes well with the aspirations of the Global South: an inclusive and representative international system designed to respond timely and efficiently to the challenges of the 21st century without Western emphasis.