The G20 Summit will take place in a freshly adorned Delhi. Neither Vladimir Putin of Russia nor Xi Jinping of China will be in attendance. Joe Biden of the United States will arrive a day early for a bilateral meeting where many agreements are anticipated to strengthen the relationship between India and the United States.
However, what is remarkable about the Narendra Modi administration’s foreign policy this week is that it is employing the G20 summit as a conceal to run through domestic objectives that it might otherwise have to discuss in Parliament, such as the G20 invitations being sent by “The President of Bharat” rather than “The President of India” and the press conference of the high-ranking committee on the scheduling of simultaneous assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
Table of Contents
G20 Amid Xi And Putin’s Absence
Naturally, the BJP’s overwhelming majority in Parliament would have made it simple to approve any bills in the House dealing with these two issues, but doing so would have required a discussion. The G20 meeting has given Modi the perfect façade to prioritise these domestic issues.
With all of that, there is little doubt that the G20 summit will add to Modi’s resume; it is irrelevant that Putin and Xi won’t be attending the major gathering. The Western media is proposing that Xi’s absence somehow compromises the G20 conference as a global platform, and Biden has already suggested this.
Three Factors Neglected By Western Media
Given that the West has condemned Putin since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February, nobody genuinely bothers about him. The Western media, however, appears to have neglected a number of other important factors.
First off, Modi’s leadership of India appears to have been reinforced in some way by India’s G20 leadership. This indicates that Modi has used the international conference as a launching pad to not just promote the developing countries, or the “Global South,” as External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar put it, but also establish himself as one of the world’s power players. As a result, Modi will share the spotlight with Biden, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, among others.
Second, the Democrat President Biden’s decision to support Modi is a significant update to the list of the PM’s numerous charms. Biden’s primary backing base hasn’t shied away from voicing its opinions, and it is unusual for US Democrats, who are known to have a left-of-centre political bent, to ally explicitly with right-wing governments in India. Recall US Representative Pramila Jayapal’s critique of the dismissal of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted a unique status to the former state of Jammu and Kashmir.
But the Biden camp immediately concluded that Modi was their only option since the TINA factor was at work. It is obvious that the BJP will probably come back to power in 2024, barring the opposition INDIA alliance’s determined efforts to mount a serious challenge. Additionally, despite having a far smaller economy than China, which is now America’s main adversary, India is the only nation in the world with the ability to compete with China.
The third point is India’s relations with Russia, which have grown more transactional. When Putin and Xi withdrew from the G20 summit, Indian officials secretly exhaled a sigh of relief.
Key Issue
The key issue is whether India made sufficient attempts to convince Putin to travel, especially considering that the Russian president has helped New Delhi out during the previous 18 months on the energy front.
There is no denying the rising closeness between India and the US, which is positive news by all accounts given that the US continues to be the world’s superpower. However, New Delhi’s reluctance to establish a Middle Path between Russia and the Rest is becoming progressively more clear. In any event, the benefits of maintaining an alliance with Moscow are drastically diminished if oil prices increase.
