 Hello welcome to everyone to another capsule IR capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. I'm sorry we missed a couple of classes because too many things were happening internationally and a lot of attention had to be given to those but we'll catch up with that. The major event that we have to cover is as you all know the G20 summit in Delhi. It's already a few days but it has allowed us this time to get a better understanding and appreciation of the situation at G20 because we are not only familiar with what happened at the summit but also some follow-up things have happened that also we are able to cover. So as you know the last one year was G20 festival in India. This is a very unusual thing in international diplomacy particularly multilateral diplomacy. In my long years of experience with international conference I've not seen anything like this so I would say it's a summit like no other. The most important difference from the other summits I have seen is the role played by the host. Normally in international conferences in the UN and others the role of the chairman is rather limited. His main responsibility is to make sure that the meeting is conducted properly, there is discipline and there are also facilities available for everyone and very often the substance need not necessarily reflect the thinking of the host. In this particular case what we did was as soon as we took over from Indonesia we started a new exercise of having many conferences. Normally you have a preparatory committee in New York or somewhere else, prepare an agenda, decide on what should be discussed and even on what the conclusion should be and that is sent to the host country and the host country calls a meeting of the foreign ministers and then the summit. This is how it was done but this time we virtually reformed multilateralism because we gave it a new meaning and a new thrust. First and foremost we held so many meetings in 60 cities in India and abroad more than 100 meetings were held. In other words we kept in G20 countries very busy catching up with so many agenda items which are normally dealt with only at the conference and the first and foremost thing that India achieved by doing this was to project India's capabilities and India's possibilities. Not only to foreigners but also ourselves because many parts of India people were not aware of a conference of this nature and therefore they were always surprised to see that the world had come to their village as it were and also many people foreign delegates arrived and they were given a full view of India's cultural heritage, India's culinary accomplishments or tourism and many others. So it was not just an international conference it was virtually a festival of India in this last one year and the other delegations of course welcomed it and they enjoyed themselves during these meetings but under substantive matters also I think India took the lead for example the theme of the conference was decided by India not anybody else or Siddhaiva Kudumbakam was something that we ourselves gave to the conference and one future idea of one earth and that kind of theme was given and it was generally accepted by everyone because only China which raised some objection asking what is this Siddhaiva Kudumbakam we don't know what do you say it in Chinese is a Sanskrit language of the United Nations all these rather childish questions they raised and just to show that they have noticed what India is doing you know taking over the leadership of the world as it were but even they went along with it in the final analysis the the theme was accepted and it was much of those ideas were incorporated into the declaration and so it was basically the agenda was in accordance with Prime Minister Modi's vision and no one except China challenged it the motto was also accepted and not one of the the declaration the leaders declaration included included several ideas and phrases that were put forward by India even PM Modi's words to President Putin today's era must not be a war I have become part of the New Delhi leaders declaration so the whole world has accepted that notion that war should be avoided this is not the time for war and various decisions on economic matters also the paragraph and not the least the paragraph on geopolitics so inescapability of dealing with the war was recognized by India right from the beginning and decided to do whatever is possible to get a consensus declaration this is particularly because we could not get a consensus in the foreign minister's meeting in the foreign minister's meeting we tried to push the Indonesian formulation where Russia was mentioned by name but Russia had decided that they will not accept that under any circumstances and it get China's strong support and that was why there was some consideration as to whether an agreement would be reached on the geopolitics paragraph of course geopolitics is not the main agenda of G20 as you all know it is basically economic social and that sort of matters but everybody knew that in this particular situation whereas war is waging in Europe for year and a half it was impossible to close our eyes to that and so the logic used in order to introduce this item was to you know start from the very beginning with the realization that this is something we have to accomplish and also because all the evils that are facing the developing countries arise from the war so the connection between the war and the agenda was very well established right from the beginning and we worked very hard on it because both sides the west the Russians and Chinese on the other hand and the west on the other determined to get what they wanted otherwise they were not going to allow the G20 conference to succeed but surprise all surprises India was able to announce an agreement on the declaration on what is called the dealer's declaration on the first day itself even before the lunch on the first day Prime Minister broke the news to the conference that we have reached an agreement and they surprised everyone and when they saw it they knew that this was the only option and what they what India did was of course this was also approved by others was to eliminate the name of Russia from the declaration because with that it would not reach the consensus we knew Russia and China would fight very hard but the method was to select some sentences from the UN Charter which are globally accepted principles so we really stayed in the principles without naming anybody like for example non-aggression non-interference internal affairs integrity of countries these are all concepts which are recognized and propagated by the UN these are words from the Charter but they were selected with the objective of giving the same signal because everybody knew who we are talking about when we were talking about you know the principles of the Charter so the exhortations these exhortations were to everybody but it was very clear in the context that these were interest to the Russians so the Russians accepted the exhortations because the drafters offered them a reiterated reiteration of the national positions and resolutions adopted at the UN Security Council so first they gave the principles of the UN Charter then they included a sentence which would say that it also takes into account all the exhortations offered in the UN Security Council and the resolutions adopted or discussed in the UN Security Council so the UN Charter principles were made contemporary and that was the trick so which means everybody who wanted to criticize Russia read it as though this is addressed to Russia while Russia read it as though it is addressed to the whole world so that was the that was the trick used and it worked because there was no other way and then an exception was also added this is very interesting that after coming to all these agreements there is one sentence there it says there were different views and assessments of the situation so which means everybody is not really endorsing everything because they are recognizing that there were other views so while Russia was happy that the declaration did not mention Russia like the president of France said the declaration is not a victory for Russia so that was the so that was the compromise so Russia thought it was a victory because their name was not mentioned and the west thought it was a victory because all these principles and demanding of action was really essential so the daily declaration was more favorable to Russia it is true than the Bali declaration because the the accusation that Russia started the war is not there directly so initially the Bali declaration was supposed to be reiterated but naturally because of the venue because it was held in India it had to be different and this is what the foreign minister kept saying that it is not possible for us to just copy the Bali declaration that to be this is India and it should reflect India's position well so this is not going to make an impact on the ground situation we all know in fact if anything even during the war during the conference there were attacks and drone attacks and various other things going on and nobody expected that the conference will come up with a call for ceasefire because ceasefire was not acceptable to either side because ceasefire will mean according to the Ukrainians more time for Russia to regroup itself and print things that Russia is about to lose and therefore they want to give them time Russia on the other hand felt that they were going to win and therefore they did not want to give a gap for Ukraine to gather arms and strengthen themselves so both were wanting to continue and therefore this this doesn't mean that there will be any question as the war will continue but this was the best that we could get and so the and then if you look at the other aspects of the declaration the economic and commercial part on various measures to improve connectivity and human-centered developments on the basis of one earth one family in one future this is the interpretation of Vasudeva Kudumbaka which was accepted and having weaker without a position on on the war so the declaration suppose it did not have anything on the war the declaration would have been weak so we accomplished both so though G20 is not the platform to resolve geopolitical and security issues but without a consensus on the war situation the summit would have lost its credibility and relevance and one of the most significant development of the global summit in Delhi was the emergence of what is called the global south because even during the Cold War with the east-west confrontation took place at that time itself there was a conflict between north and south also north-south dialogue and south-south dialogue and north-south cooperation all these were mentioned even at that time so at that time these points were made by the non-aligned movement on the one side and there are some other developing countries which are not in the non-aligned moment were represented in G77 so there was a certain automaticity of agreement between non-aligned and G77 but here the decisions of summit were taken with the participation of the north so it is the north-south agenda or global south agenda which is emphasized but it had the consent of the north that makes a big difference and Russia in China is part of that exercise and therefore everybody as they say in molecular diplomacy everybody is equally unhappy everybody is not happy that never happens in a conference like this so at least everybody was equally unhappy so but here the absence of presidentry of China was noticed because he had come he had agreed to come earlier but maybe he did not come we don't know many people say there are very many reasons the one reason might be to not to be a part of the coronation of India as the leader of global south they don't want to be part of it as it has a dominating presence in bricks so they are focusing on the bricks for the global south and they did not want to join an exercise where India's prominence being re-established but the it is very clear that one building block or the new global order has been built and that one building block is as I said earlier is the global south because it is not very clear who are in the global south who will be the leader of it who will articulate it etc etc all open and that might take some time and the main rival to us in this case is China and others also may not be so very happy to concede India's leadership so later we discover that even Canada is not very happy that India is doing so well we'll come to that in our next story next capsule so what we have done certainly is the that we have built a block many more blocks are required to have a new global order but one has been established and what remains is to find the way to cement it together after all the building blocks are done then we need the motor to pull it back together and then you get a global order and one other claim that India is making is that India is responsible for getting the African Union as a member of G20 on the strength of the European Union being a member of course the European Union it was done exceptionally because European Union acts as one country in various issues and therefore it was logical to bring European Union into it but African Union is hardly enough a union they are still fighting wars like Europeans used to do 400 years ago and they are 400 years ago behind an African Union and therefore it may not be possible for this includes brings it to its whole continent it brings in more population more wealth more broad development but the establishing the bonds of among the countries in Africa will not be very easy because there are very many differences even on the question of the expansion of the Security Council the African Union has not been agree on one country or two countries they want two countries but they're likely to be one country and nobody knows who that one country in Nigeria wants it Egypt wants it South Africa wants it I don't know how many others so they are not able to put forward a candidate from Africa and they are now talking about rotating etc so but a participation of African Union as a single unit will be effective only if they are able to speak with one voice so the membership of G20 will hopefully provide the incentive for the African Union to have a cohesive voice in world affairs without being exploited by China and others but we have taken this initiative basically to show our own goodwill and our own interest in Africa Africa applied sometime earlier but people were not very willing to accept them as a union and therefore India took the credit so and therefore we believe we have received the goodwill and sympathy of the African countries next was of course the pursuit of sustainable development goals the need to address the hopeless state of affairs of climate finance and the inequities of the world belonging to the old agenda and these are all being reiterated basically the same thing but it was lagging behind and that has been updated in addition there were several initiatives like digital public infrastructure then India Middle East Europe connectivity corridor then bio fuel initiative strengthening the global health architecture closing your gender gaps and reform of the UN and international financial institutions such a long wish list here of course we have re-established the positions of the global south and the developed world has been urged to implement them because it is they who have to make resources available so we hope that these agreements they have also a party to it not just the 77 or the global south there may be some some progress but we have to see how this moves on to in Brazil so there was some concern because it always happens when western leaders come to India that they will raise issues of about human rights situation yeah so we expected this but apparently they kept it and the you know bilateral level and they did not raise it formally President Biden said that he had raised the human rights issue PM Modi but curiously the paragraph from one of the UN year resolutions on religious tolerance and freedom found its way as paragraph 78 we did not know who suggested it we did not know whether India had any objection to it but it was not point in objecting because it was a general statement which we all agree we agree that there should be no discrimination we agree that there should be democracy and human rights in all the member states and that is what it says this paragraph so if you objected it in any form people would say oh this is India is showing that this had you had you know is is theirs and we didn't want to claim that obviously and therefore this paragraph was introduced it was a declaration to other resolution of the general assembly which everybody had accepted so the Indian delegation may have treated this as accepted language which applies to different situations and not specific to India but it may be quoted in future you may find western delegations quoting this paragraph to say that India had also agreed to that so the way India turned 2020 into a year-long activity with innumerable meetings in different parts of India and abroad and managed to reach valuable conclusions on difficult issues has greatly enhanced India's prestige and stature India has also showcased its remarkable achievements from reducing poverty to bringing light to the dark side of the moon Prime Minister Modi's stellar performance and indefatigable energy were unanimously employed by all India's dream to be in the forefront of international politics has almost come true India has placed itself firmly as a major player in the shaping of a new world order so this is the briefest possible assessment or analysis of the G20 summit I hope you will take note of all these aspects because in one way or the other these are all going to figure in your examination because there are so many technical words here so many concepts and all these you will have to know very well when we write about or speak about it and the story of the G20 summit is not over the whole year till the Brazilian summit takes place this will be the talk of the town and naturally some questions will arise as it has happened in the case of Canada totally unexpected but this is to be expected because when you really want to reshape the world everybody is not very happy that it goes by the name of only India they would all want to be part of the take part of the cake so that is to be expected but let's hope that there's a new beginning of building a world order in which 125 countries as a bloc as the global south is going to thank you very much I think they are not formally a member of G20 I think so I have not checked this that may be I never thought about this and it may be simply because they are not a member of the G20 because there are non-members there there's around specific invitation we love to check this my feeling is sale was not there because of that we we don't speak about non-aligned policy and though in his most recent speech in the journal assembly the foreign minister said that instead of being non-aligned we are Sarva Mitra that means we are friends of all not non-aligned but aligned to everybody so that is the new new phraseology and strategic autonomy of course is the basis of that so we'll go by our own likes our own thinking and not being pressurized by anybody but at the same time we'll take into account the interests of all and remain friendly to everyone so it was Sarva Mitra friends of all with the new name for India thank you very much