On 77th Year of Independence, India leads G-20, prioritizes global cooperation

On 1 December 2022, India assumed the Presidency of the Group of 20 (G-20). The G-20 represents 19 major economies and the European Union, comprising 85% of global GDP, over 75% of global trade, and about two-thirds of the global population. The theme of India’s G-20 Presidency is “One Earth, One Family, One Future”, also encapsulated in Sanskrit by the phrase Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. India’s holistic interdependent approach to global issues emphasizes effective and equitable global cooperation. By the time the G-20 Summit is held in India on 9-10 September 2023, about 200 meetings of the G-20 would have been hosted in over 50 cities in India to carry forward the G-20 work plan across 32 different work streams. This provides a large canvas for global cooperation. India’s six declared priorities as the G-20 President are: climate change including climate action; inclusive and resilient growth; acceleration of progress on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); technological transformation and digital public infrastructure; women-led development; and reformed multilateralism. India’s endeavor is to make G-20 activities “human-centric”, with G-20 meetings held in India so far emphasizing the participation of all relevant stakeholders, including large numbers of youth. The G-20 Bali Summit held in November 2022 reiterated that the G-20 remains “the premier forum for global economic cooperation”. India’s Presidency of the G-20 has consciously focused on greater global cooperation within this economic framework. The main challenges for global cooperation today come from the impact of armed conflicts and unprecedented disruptions like the Covid-19 pandemic on socio-economic development. Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represents the only universal framework for global socio-economic development. Two statistics illustrate the current grave human-centric dimensionFILE PHOTO: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo take part in the handover ceremony at the G20 Leaders’ Summit, in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, November 16, 2022. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/Pool

of the challenges facing Agenda 2030. According to the UN, about 60 million people world-wide were victims of armed conflicts when Agenda 2030 was adopted unanimously in September 2015. By 2022, that figure has risen sharply to 324 million people. In 2015, according to the World Bank, about 700 million people, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, were living below the poverty line. By 2022, about 685 people across the world were below the poverty line, with as many as 150 million, mainly in developing countries, pulled below the poverty line by the Covid-19 pandemic. The report underlined that global inequality had risen for the first time in decades, with income losses of the world’s poorest people being twice as high as income losses of the world’s richest people. In response, the priority for India’s G-20 Presidency has been to revive the momentum of global cooperation needed to achieve Agenda 2030 by its deadline of 31 December 2030. The identified SDGs subsume the six priorities identified by India during its Presidency. In the six areas that India has identified as its priorities, national initiatives taken by India have been shared with other G-20 countries, especially developing countries. India’s credentials for pushing greater global cooperation within the G-20 has strong foundations. Climate Change: The Climate Change pillar has been influenced significantly by India’s initiative to champion Climate Action. Two landmark proposals are adapting global Lifestyles for Environment (LiFE), and using renewable solar energy for development. The joint India-France proposal on harnessing solar energy, made during the 2015 Paris Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has resulted in the creation of a new multilateral intergovernmental organization based in India, the International Solar Alliance (ISA). Today, about 120 countries are members of the ISA, which aims to mobilize US$ 1,000 billion in investments in solar energy solutions by 2030, delivering energy access to 1,000 million people using clean energy solutions and resulting in the installation of 1,000 GW of solar energy capacity. During its G-20 Presidency, India has focused on the need for G-20 developed country members to contribute both financially and through non-restrictive transfers of environmentally friendly technologies to enhance the national capacities of developing countries to meet global environmental targets. Inclusive Growth: India’s flagship initiative for a global Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) made at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit anchors the growing emphasis within the G-20 on the need to sustain economic growth and build resilient supply chains, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic and a series of natural disasters attributed to climate change. By developing standards and regulations to make infrastructure resilient in confronting disaster and climate risks, the CDRI seeks to expand a multiple stakeholder approach to sustain growth through a two-way knowledge transfer between developed and developing countries. India, which hosts the CDRI Secretariat, is currently the single largest financial contributor to this initiative. Sustainable Development: To assist developing countries to meet their national targets to implement Agenda 2030 and its SDGs, India and the UN created the India-UN Development Partnership Fund in 2017. With committed financial support of $150 million from India, the Fund has prioritized development projects in least-developed countries, landlocked-developing countries, and small island developing states. So far, 36 projects in 37 partner countries have been processed by the Fund. Technological Transformation: India’s successful experience in using digital technologies for governance and empowerment to accelerate development through a “whole of society” approach has made it a credible thought-leader in this area during its G-20 Presidency. In partnership with the UNDP, India has hosted a series of G-20 discussions to position India as a global hub for using open and interoperable standards to create a human-centric digital public infrastructure with lower implementation costs, especially for developing countries. Women’s Empowerment: India has prioritized women’s digital and financial inclusion through the use of digital technology. The current focus of G-20 meetings being held in India in this sphere includes effective outreach on education for women, greater participation by women in the workforce, larger representation of women in leadership positions, and the continued narrowing of theNirmala Sitharaman, India’s Finance Minister, speaking at G20 FM meetings in Washington, D.C. April 20, 2022. Photo: Twitter @FinMinIndia

identified gaps on gender equality. Reformed Multilateralism: The Preamble of Agenda 2030 underscored that “there can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development”. India has taken the lead to implement this by pointing out that “this is not an era of war”. However, the ineffectiveness of existing multilateral institutions to ensure peace, security and development has highlighted calls for “reformed multilateralism”. The G-20 will need to give a major push to reform multilateral institutions like the UN and its Security Council, responsible under the UN Charter for maintaining international peace and security (where reforms mandated unanimously by world leaders in 2005 continue to be blocked by the five permanent members of the Security Council); the International Monetary Fund/World Bank, mandated by their Articles of Agreement to ensure global financial coordination for international reconstruction and development (where IMF quota and governance reforms agreed to in 2010 remain unimplemented till now due to delaying tactics by developed countries); and the World Trade Organization, created to ensure the primacy of multilaterally agreed trade rules based on non-discrimination (where reforms to enhance the organization’s integrity and effectiveness are being exploited since 2016 by the growing recourse of developed countries to unilateralism and protectionism). When India assumed the Presidency of the G-20 at the November 2022 Bali Summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that India’s “G-20 priorities will be shaped in consultation with not just our G-20 partners, but also our fellow-travellers in the Global South, whose voice often goes unheard.” On 12-13 January 2023, India hosted a virtual “Voice of the Global South for Human-centric Development” Summit. A measure of the importance of India’s initiative can be gauged from the fact that 125 countries responded to this initiative, including 47 from Africa, 31 from Asia, 29 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 11 from Oceania, and 7 from Europe. On 27March 2023, developing countries in the UN voted overwhelmingly to adopt are solution opposing unilateral sanctions due to their “extra-territorial” nature and adverse impact on the “right to development”. The deliberations of the G-20 under India’s Presidency will be carried forward through two processes. Within the G-20, three major developing countries (India, Brazil, and South Africa) will lead the G-20 during 2023-2025 creating a three-year window for implementing the priorities of the Global South. Outside the G-20, ongoing processes for enhancing international cooperation will come to a head with the UN’s SDG Summit in September 2023, followed by the UN’s Summit of the Future in 2024. These Summits are expected to result in the call for a General Conference to review the UN Charter, as recommended in April 2023 by the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, to coincide with the UN’s 80th anniversary Summit in 2025. This represents a golden opportunity for India’s G-20 Presidency in consolidating a “human-centric” sustainable development paradigm, which will restore popular support for the principle of international cooperation upholding the functioning of the “world as one family”.[Ambassador (Retd.) Asoke Mukerji is Distinguished Fellow, Vivekananda International Foundation, New Delhi.] Source: https://www.newsindiatimes.com/

Read More........ → August 14, 2023

Joe Biden appoints two Indian-Americans to advisory committee for Trade Policy, Negotiations

US President Joe Biden on Friday named two Indian-Americans Revathi Advaithi, CEO of Flex, and Manish Bapna, CEO of the Natural Resources Defence Council to the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. On Friday, Biden announced his intent to appoint 14 people to the Advisory Committee, which provides overall policy advice to the United States Trade Representative on matters of development, implementation, and administration of the US trade policy. Among these include negotiating objectives and bargaining positions before entering into trade agreements, the impact of the implementation of trade agreements, matters concerning the operation of any trade agreement once entered into, and other matters arising in connection with the development, implementation, and administration of the trade policy of the United States, the White House said. Revathi Advaithi is CEO of Flex, "the global manufacturing partner of choice that helps a diverse customer base design and build products to improve the world". Since assuming the role in 2019, Advaithi has been responsible for architecting the company's strategic direction and leading Flex through a transformation that is defining a new era in manufacturing, the White House said. Prior to Flex, Advaithi was president and Chief Operating Officer for the electrical sector business for Eaton, a company with more than USD20 billion in sales and 102,000 employees. She has also worked at Eaton's electrical sector, Americas, and Honeywell, and serves on the Board of Directors of Uber and Catalyst.org. Advaithi is a Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Advanced Manufacturing CEO Community and joined the WEF Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders. She was recognized on Fortune's Most Powerful Women in Business list for four consecutive years and named one of Business Today's Most Powerful Women in India. She holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Manish Bapna is president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), which has been behind many of the most significant environmental milestones of the last half century from the creation of bedrock environmental laws, to landmark legal victories, and foundational research, the White House said. During his 25-year career, Bapna's leadership roles have focused on tackling the root causes of poverty and climate change with strategies that are equitable, durable, and scalable. Most recently, he served as Executive Vice President and Managing Director of the World Resources Institute, a research organization focused on the intersection of the environment and human development, for more than 14 years. An economist by training, he got his start at McKinsey & Company and the World Bank before pursuing a career in advocacy at the Bank Information Centre. He has master's degrees in Business and Political and Economic Development from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT, the White House said. Copyright © Jammu Links News Source - Jammu Links News

Read More........ → March 14, 2023

​The UK's economic prospects continue to dwindle

In early February, about half a million people went on strike in the U.K. [Photo/cfp.cn]

"The United Kingdom lost more working days to strikes in 2022 than in any year since 1989, as employees walked out in large numbers over pay amid soaring living costs," reads an article on CNN. Last year was, to put it mildly, a miserable experience for the U.K. Despite having mostly recovered from COVID-19, the country's economy remains in a state of stagnation. Faced with shrinking incomes and crippling levels of inflation, its economic performance is worse than any country in the G7 and the only one expected to enter recession.

The grim economic prospects throughout the country have led to a tidal wave of economic discontent that has manifested in strikes across the board, drawing upon memories of the industrial unrest and upheavals faced in the 1970s and 1980s. In public opinion polls, the current government is deeply unpopular and trails the opposition Labour Party by over 20 points. Many decisions the government has made, including the decision to follow the U.S. blindly in escalating tensions with China, deliberately intensifying the war in Ukraine, and Brexit, among things, are responsible for the economic fallout. The product is a "broken Britain."

Since the late 1970s, the U.K.'s Conservative Party has premised its economic policy on Neoliberalism, which has religiously adhered to the fundamentals of free-market economics and privatization, even at the staggering expense of the British themselves. While this began with the reign of Margaret Thatcher, who destroyed Britain's industrial base and created large-scale regional inequalities, it was ultimately continued with the government of David Cameron, who pursued the largest program of austerity the country had seen in a century, gutting the public sector and only deepening the country's growing inequalities.

The combined long-term impact of these economic policies has been to effectively sacrifice the British working class, shrinking incomes, undermining consumption, and creating an economic model which has made British-led innovation and competitiveness untenable, leading to long-term economic stagnation from as far back as 2008. Politically, the end result of this trajectory has been to create social-economic conflict in the U.K. in the form of populist right-wing nationalism, promoted by the popular right-wing press, which ultimately resulted in Brexit.

The Conservative government has responded to these shifts by injecting nationalism into its foreign policy in order to make up for its domestic shortcomings. While the government of David Cameron was liberal in nature and pro-EU, he subsequently lost the internal partisan struggle over Brexit, as well as the referendum, leading to a new status quo led by Boris Johnson, which has sacrificed reason and economic logic for the sake of populism.

The result of this domestic-foreign policy dynamic, which seeks to mask domestic structural economic failures with imperial adventurism abroad, has become self-reinforcing and reflected in growing damage to Britain's economy. British foreign policy, with respect to Russia, China, and the European Union, as well as elsewhere, is being driven by ideology, not reason, making the primary drivers of the country's GDP stagnation and surging inflation. Thus, in 2022, the United Kingdom began to face industrial unrest as workers and unions felt their incomes were no longer sufficient to match rising prices. According to the Office for National Statistics, "843,000 working days were lost in December 2022 alone – the highest monthly number since November 2011," with "workers in health care, communications, and transportation among those who walked out."

The economic system that the U.K. adopted in the 1970s and 1980s no longer delivers for ordinary people. Instead, it is dividing the country, and such divisions have only been intensified by more aggressive policies by successive governments and have created economic stagnation. With Britain being a service-based economy, it is failing to grow because people's incomes are shrinking, and, worse still, the foreign policy environment that the British government is creating goes fundamentally against its own national interest. If the U.K. is to recover, a dramatic change is needed, and that should start with binning the "post-Boris Johnson" consensus of nationalism, populism, and geopolitical adventurism, all of which have dealt significant damage to the country's place in the world.

Tom Fowdy is a British political and international relations analyst and a graduate of Durham and Oxford universities. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/TomFowdy.htm, Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.If you would like to contribute, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn. Source: China.org.cn

Read More........ → March 01, 2023