With G-20 Presidency India Tried to Push Global South Into Mainstream: Expert

India has made sincere efforts to bring the Global South into the mainstream throughout its presidency of the powerful G-20 forum, an international relations expert has said.

The remarks of New Delhi-based geopolitics pundit Major General (Retd.) Shashi Bhushan Asthana came hours ahead of the summit of the leaders of G-20 member states to be held in the Indian capital from September 9-10.

Asthana pointed out that during the G-20 presidency, India's theme is 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam', meaning the world is one family while the underlying theme is all-inclusive growth.

He opined that the region of Global South, or the nations of this part of the world have been left behind in several ways as far as development is concerned. Against this background, India has made significant efforts to include them in global platforms like the G-20.

"One of the major examples of India's attempts toward including the members of Global South into the G-20 is its push to ensure that the African Union (AU) gets the membership of the G-20," Asthana told Sputnik India on Thursday.

In fact, he suggested, New Delhi went to the extent of writing to all the members of the G-20 before the summit, forcing most of the members to endorse the African Union's inclusion in the G-20.

Incidentally, the African Union is a bloc of 55 countries, which are all developing nations with most of them having a poor state of development.

Asthana emphasized that this was one of the major examples of how India has been making efforts to get the Global South into the mainstream and give the Global South a voice in G-20.

Similarly, the strategic affairs analyst elaborated, that the issues that have been discussed during India's G-20 presidency, all indicate inclusive growth and inclusiveness.

"India has held over 200 meetings since taking over the chair of G-20 from Indonesia and every aspect of human development has been discussed in these interactions which New Delhi has organized in the past one year," he noted.

In most cases, Asthana stressed that a large number of countries from the Global South were included. By doing this, India demonstrated through G-20 its sincereness of purpose to be the voice of the Global South, include the Global South in the overall growth of the world, and prove the theme that it is genuinely looking at the whole world as one family and one future so everyone grows together.

Also, the former Indian Army officer who presently serves as the director of the United Service Institution (USI), a defense and international affairs think tank in Delhi, expressed that India's emergence as the leading voice of the Global South was mainly because the region has been neglected by multilateral institutions like the UN.

For example, the United Nations Security Council is currently determined by the victors of World War II and China. What is important to note here is that in the last seven decades, the UNSC has not reformed itself and does not represent the present-day realities of global geopolitics.

Likewise, he referred, that many continents were not represented in the powerful global body. For instance, South America is not represented, Africa is not represented, and South Asia is not represented, and that being the case, there is a need for the UNSC to reform itself and increase its membership.

Asthana remarked that the veto power given to permanent members of the UNSC was restricting the functioning of the institution. Two blocs have emerged there - one is the Western camp, having the US, the UK, and France, and the other one featuring China and Russia.

In this light, for years, India has been proposing reforms in the UNSC and there has been a proposal by G-4 countries (Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan).

Notably, Japan, Germany, and India are the world's third, fourth, and fifth largest economies, and their representation in the UNSC will make the body more balanced.

In Asthana's view, there should be at least 10 permanent members in UNSC representing each continent of the world and these should include the G-4 nations and South Africa.