I was in Europe last week and in the headquarters of the OECD, the rich man?s club. Once a year they have a Development Forum and third world types like me get asked to come for the prepcoms. Their preoccupation with the G-20 was understandable. Of course, in France President Sarkozy would make the romantic headlines and Prime Minister Berlusconi would provide comic relief everywhere. But the underlying seriousness was a motif also for the daily press. Especially when one out of six persons are without a job that is obvious. Yet I come back home and the trivialisation of the occasion is overwhelming. Intellectually we are really non-aligned with the world, in a sense which would horrify Nehru Chacha. The first thing to recognise is that structures change, interests don?t and foreign policy is not just verbiage, but reconciliation. Some background may be of help.
The idea of an expanded G8 goes to the Canadians, Paul Martin in particular. It began in 2002. India was still a basket case since the IMF papers came in 2003/04 and the CIA and Goldman Sachs pronouncements later. John Kirton was the first to show that China and India are in the first eight in terms of GDP in purchasing power parity and some G-8 countries were not. Martin made an issue of this and the argument that you cannot solve world problems without them. It was not popular. No one likes to give up the status of power. Only the idealist knows that you can be more powerful by giving up power. Martin picked up the torch from Pearson and Trudeau. But more important he set up systems to work on the new world. In 2004 the leadership from the top argument was ready arguing for a G -20 Summit.
The argument, interestingly, was not popular with China and India. China had made it to the Security Council and felt that the expanded G-8 would be a demotion, but took refuge behind the argument of G77 democratisation. By this time the L20 book had been printed, edited by John English, Ramesh Thakur and Andy Cooper and the Chinese essay byYu Yong Ding was decidedly ascerbic. I was my usual enthusiastic self in an irreverential essay on Sherpas and Coolies, giving what I felt the Indian sherpa?s stand should be, but when India was invited to the G8, its official stand was cool. It had just sewed up its understanding with President Bush and wasn?t in a mood to think out of that.
The L20 book was in a sense anticipating the next few years. It caught the low-hanging fruit and looked wistfully at the tough ones. Diplomatically it ignored the really tough ones for that would weaken the new structures, letting some of the arguments rest in my coolies paper. Those paradigms discovered in 2003, printed in 2004/05 remain in 2009, proving that interests are not for sale. But first the low-hanging fruits.Anna Marie Slaughter, who now advises President Obama talks of the networked world and the danger of a pandemic being more lethal than terrorism. The global health agenda was to follow, as also micro finance at Gleneagles.
Now the tougher ones. I talked of the Asian crisis and a need to develop an early warning system. But the prize went to Gordon Smith who was a Sherpa earlier. In his piece with Barry Carin, he makes a song and dance of the business cycle. That was heresy then for we were in the golden age of derivatives stabilising the world and their harping on history seems prophetic and anticipates the ?09 G-20. Incidentally India has, as I wrote in 2003, asked for an early warning system now. Water and energy were seen as tough then but are on the agenda. I got some credit, for the editors argued that ?Alagh?s chapter sets a high test for the L20, but it is an option he sees within the range of possibillitties.?Again I am quoted as saying that Cancun failed not because the issues were intractable, but because the World did not recognise that the East Asian crises had sent the global agricultural economy into a spin. In water and energy again cutting-edge institutions are not becoming a part of the stateof-the-art solutions on a global plane.? Pittsburgh put the spotlight on energy. Water is still out there and now we will raise it with food security, another Obama interest.
In spite of all my persuasion, the editors of L20 only gave me a hearing on agriculture in the WTO. In a recent invited piece for Kirton?s G20 volume for Pittsburgh I showed that India was willing to get Doha done. The G20 did not bite as all the global press reports show. Our briefings on that are a little on the starry side. The Sherpa?s haven?t even been allowed to get their toes in that one. Structures change. Permanent interests don?t. That?s what negotiations are all about.
The author is a former Union minister and former vice-chancellor, JNU