The laudable Leaders? 20 (L20) initiative, promoted by former Canadian PM Paul Martin, was started but never matured to his original design. He persisted and Russia and the UK announced an invite to India and China. On this subject, in my work, I talked about nations using concentric circles of influence as strategy and methods?developed by Rajiv Gandhi?to pursue their objectives. It must be recognised that the G8-plus is one such method and must be strengthened.
However, there are two riders. The first is that the networks currently available are not strong enough to bring global ideas to the fore in a business-like manner such that the G8-plus can address them; and the WTO is not discussed as an alternative in any meaningful way. Second, although an initiative for self-help groups was taken in 2005, it leaves out most of the big financing reform issues, both globally and in national policies on empowerment of organisations for the poor, for rural development and agricultural growth. The energy initiative also fell short. China engaged, but was sceptical. India was also sceptical. Our Prime Minister said that India was there to solve problems, not petition, but that the structure of the forum did not provide for it. At present, the force of Brazil in opening up world markets is not fully unleashed. Mexico occupies a strategic position geographically but also as a bridge to the OECD. South Africa and its revolutionary concepts of egalitarian change do not get a hearing.
In terms of the great global debates, Indira Gandhi?s Stockholm Conference on ?poverty is polluting? was written by Pitamber Pant of the Planning Commission. India?s pioneering stand at the Budapest First Population Conference linking population policy with development, the precursor to the UNDP?s MDGs, was crafted by Sukhomoy Chakravarti of the Planning Commission. But I am told that the Perspective Planning Division that did all the thinking has shrunk to a non-entity. Delhi?s think-tanks, living off consultancy contracts from foreign capital, contribute little that is original. The Chambers of Commerce are essential but don?t really go beyond the interest groups they represent. The government is perfectly entitled to honour NRI economists who toe its line, but in the global bazaar we also need to develop and market our own experience and strengths. It was not the CIA or Goldman Sachs reports, which first said that India is, in PPP terms, the fourth largest economy of the world, but some of us and John Kirton, a Canadian economist.
In writing for Reforming from the Top: A Leaders? 20 Summit, the global think-tank CIGI?s pioneering book for the presence of the third world in the G8, I was not being facetious in saying that in addition to the ?sherpas? you also need the ?coolies?, recognised by Anne Marie Slaughter, advisor to the US President, Andy Cooper, Colin Bradford and Ramesh Thakur. Arguing for energy, water and trade from the Indian perspective, the main point was that the language of the other has to be understood. India is ideally placed to explain and advocate this language.
The pursuit of our national interest abroad has to be a part of a larger campaign of our designs for the globe.
The nuclear debate put India on top but the not-so-good part was the erosion of the bipartisan aspect of its foreign policy that gave it grandeur. This column had always targeted critics and asked them to take the larger view of history but was obviously not convincing enough; although it is strange for Marxists to be critical of technological frontiers for the larger good. The G20 debate in the world is again on that grand scale but as India shrinks inwards and lets bureaucrats call the shots, its voice may also shrink.
For India, I argue that the decade before the setting up of the G20 saw major changes in India?s perception of its role. While strangely unnoticed in the world then, it started growing fast and defined, in a more concrete sense, its interest as a growing power. These experiences conditioned India?s responses in global forums. In the G20, multilateralism is the way for India to define its destiny, if the goal of pursuing concentric circles of influence is to be met. This defines India?s position in the WTO, where it won the intellectual debate, in showing that gradualism won?t work on energy, water, MDGs, democratic governance and financial collateral for removing poverty through energising institutions to back up local initiatives. Later this month, we need to show that our time has arrived.
The author is a former Union minister