AS theatre buffs will know, centre stage isn’t the centre of the stage per se, but any part of the proscenium where the action is unfolding. This is true of politics as well. The US may want to put China in its crosshairs, but the action is unfolding in its own backyard, in the House of Representatives. There’s another way to say it. When they are not holding their annual summit, what are the G20 leaders preoccupied with? We know what the Russian and American leaders are busy with: how to get the better of each other, at a prohibitive cost to millions of innocent lives while leaving the world in tatters. What keeps others busy? Where is their action focused? Before India’s presidency, Indonesia was the host last year. As soon as the summit was over in Bali, Jakarta returned to its ‘normal life’. It criminalised consensual relationships outside marriage, dragging in the foreign tourists in its ambit. A tranche of suffocating new laws showed that G20 with all its overstated clout could not stop Indonesia from pandering to religious bigotry at home.

The next host is Brazil. Its defeated president Bolsonaro mercifully decided to skip the Bali summit. If all goes well, President Lula should be hosting the summit in 2024. Much of the future depends on how the rightwing insurgents are tamed after they assaulted the parliament. They are raging, as do Donald Trump’s supporters still, against the election their rightwing candidate lost. Bolsonaro’s supporters want the military to stage a coup against Lula. In 2020, Saudi Arabia of all countries was the G20 host while cleaning the bloody mess left by its gruesome murder of an outspoken journalist. The pandemic ensured the summit was held online.

How then should we sift the illusion from the reality about the G20 presidency that has come to India this year? Is it really a forum where the rich and wannabe-rich countries can sit together to fix the haemorrhaging problems facing the world? Is that how it works? To begin with, G20 was set up by the G7 in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which left the Western economies severely mauled. The idea was to broaden the economic base by co-opting key members of the South-South compact of the G77 of which, incidentally, Pakistan was president in 2022. G20 is thus a creature of G7, which, to use a Leninist construct, is akin to the party politburo of which the rest are a handy mass base.

Indira Gandhi would visit Moscow, and the entire politburo in their ZIL-4104 limousines would be at the airport to receive her.

G77 on the other hand was about solidarity of the Global South in which India was a key player. There was a time when Manmohan Singh was the member secretary of the South-South Commission headed by the late Tanzanian icon Julius Nyerere. India has said that as the rotational president of the G20, it would host a meeting of the developing nations. It hopes to speak for them with G20 leaders in Delhi. But India was already doing this for decades, only better. It excelled both as a key G77 leader and as a stalwart of a once robust Non-Aligned Movement.

The question is can Prime Minister Modi hope to do anything for the developing countries that his estranged Chinese friend isn’t already doing quite well? With the Belt and Road Initiative chugging along, President Xi Jinping unveiled the Global Development Initiative recently. He told the G20 leaders in Bali that within one year, more than 60 countries had joined the Group of Friends of the GDI as it hopes to provide new impetus for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. “We will work with fellow G20 members to deliver on these projects.” The Chinese steamroller could leave Mr Modi stranded. Will India join Xi’s initiative, which would make political and economic sense, or start something of its own? China supports the African Union in joining the G20, Xi said. India can no more than ad-lib that.

There was a time when India had its own way of sharing the joys and pains of the developing world. There was a time when India stood up for global causes and in so doing rallied 120 NAM countries that looked up to its leadership. Taking a principled stand was important. Thus Indira Gandhi spoke up for Palestine, the Polisario Front, SWAPO in Africa and other liberation movements across the world — not least, of course, for Vietnam.

But times have changed. India’s foreign minister says the country commands more respect than ever before. India had held backroom talks with Russia and Ukraine to defuse a crisis in which a nuclear power plant in Ukraine could have become a deliberate or accidental target, with disastrous consequences to the world. What he did not say was that this has been India’s métier since Nehru. It was Nehru after all who critically negotiated a fabled truce in the Korean war. It was Indira Gandhi whose emissary Romesh Bhandari was mandated by NAM leaders to bring the Iran-Iraq war to an early end.

As for the respect India has earned, there is the lasting image of Mrs Gandhi receiving the NAM gavel from Fidel Castro while dodging his bear hug. The applause was deafening. She would visit Moscow, and the entire politburo in their ZIL-4104 limousines would be at the airport to receive her. She went to Washington, and you should have watched Ronald Reagan wading into poetry while welcoming her at the White House. There was none of the fawning “Barack my friend” or “Hello Donald”. It was “Mr President” and “Prime Minister” with a lot of social graces thrown in to good effect. There was never the clamour for a vacant seat at the high table. Nor was there any need for a pacifier, like the G20 gavel, for example.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2023