India and Voice of Global South Summit 3.0

India successfully held the third Voice of Global South Summit (VOGSS) on 17 August. It carried forward the agenda of the previous two summits, which had fed into the G20 process.

The VOGSS remains India's initiative and is not held in conjunction with Brazil and South Africa, which will hold the G20 chairmanship ahead. It was an airing of views, a coming together of ideas and a building of Global South solidarity as crises in Ukraine and in Gaza continue.

In the last quarter of this year, the UNGA session, the Summit of the Future and other important meetings are scheduled for which the wide agenda of the VOGSS would be a useful exercise to prepare common ground.

There are six significant issues which emerge from the VOGSS. First, the opportunity that it provided in earlier editions for a large number of countries to articulate their positions continues to attract them. Since it's an online process, 131 countries participated.

The format included 21 leaders and 10 ministerial sessions focusing on different issues. Progress on those issues which were part of the G20 agenda is ongoing. The opportunity for articulation and engagement that VOGSS provides is an important aspect of it.

Secondly, the focus on agenda items by various countries was clear. Climate change, the inability to attain the Sustainable Development Goals, the unequal international order continues to be important issues. The problems articulated included food, health, and energy security, the challenges of accessing resources, the problem of realizing the demographic dividend, concerns about employment and about economic inequality.

Thirdly, in order to deal with such issues India had promised a Global South Young Diplomats Forum and the Global South Action Centre, both of which are now functional. 30 young diplomats were in India at the Foreign Service Institute in November 2023. Dakshin, the Centre, is a Development and Knowledge Sharing Initiative. It endeavours to assist partners in the identification and implementation of sustainable solutions.

Fourthly, though the VOGSS was not an implementation exercise, India enunciated a plan to have a Global Development Compact; the experience of India's development efforts, was available for sharing. The Global South has expectations of India. India has development projects in nearly 80 countries globally. Countries realise if disaster strikes, particularly in the neighbourhood, India is an effective first responder.

The Compact would allow Global South to establish its multi-dimensional priorities, with sensitivity to debt and sustainability. This is essentially a self-help approach of the Global South, to aggregate its talent and energies to achieve its own ambitions, rather than await resolution of alternate financing mechanisms, alleviation of debt stress and reform of multilateral development banks, which are on the agenda but are time consuming.

This is indeed a good step for the Global South to have its own avenues to fund some of its requirements for SDGs. Related to this is India's announcement of a Social Impact Fund of $ 25 million. This will help expand the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)-led frameworks. India draws sustenance from the fact that the India Stack offerings have attracted partnerships with 12 countries, while the DPI attracts greater attention across the North and South. The Social Impact Fund is the correct way to go forward because it directly addresses issues rather than government procurement systems. If the private sector is invited to implement the Impact Fund projects, they will use the experience of Indian groups who have successfully done this in Southeast Asia and Africa, besides India.

Fifthly, while the effort continues to be to attract larger number of countries, the success rate of smaller countries participation in the VOGSS is high. At the level of leaders, 21 countries participated, of which six were from Latin America and the Caribbean and four from India's neighbourhood. Two each from Africa, ASEAN and South Pacific participated. This may look like a lack of powerful countries presence. Actually, it is an avenue for the less vocal countries to be heard.

Keeping this in view and keeping the growing agenda of the Global South in sight, would the VOGSS benefit from bringing in regional organizations into the next edition to elicit their views?

These regional organizations represent many countries and often have already articulated views on the developmental agenda and built a consensus among their members. Such organizations with whom India have a partnership, like ASEAN, the African Union, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Pacific Islands Forum, the Gulf Cooperation Council could all be mutually useful.

From within Africa, functioning regional economic communities like ECOWAS for West Africa, SADC for southern Africa and East African Community for Eastern Africa would be important participants in various ministerial sessions.

The presence of five multilateral development banks in some of the sessions has made a beginning, and this could be carried forward by bringing in regional organizations who can contribute to the building of a global consensus around a common agenda.

Sixthly, the Global South seeks to democratize global governance. Though VOGSS brings together Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Africa, on important issues there is a lack of agreement. The SIDS often strike their own furrow, trying to extract concessions form larger developing countries like India, and Brazil rather than stand with them consistently. On UN reform the Global South and Africa say the same thing but in practice the Ezulwini Consensus of the African Union is among the issues that weigh down progress on reform.

VOGSS is an effort get the world to alter its ideas about India. This implies creating capacities across a varied spectrum. This required India to participate in important international debates and be viewed more as a solution provider than the generator of problems. The Global South expects that India would shoulder greater responsibilities and make larger contributions. Through VOGSS, India attempted to achieve improved understanding of the various dimensions of transformation of our society and its impact on the Global South through experience sharing.

India evidently seeks to establish itself as a more ‘credible and trusted partner’. Most of the issues and perceptions that were raised at VOGSS add to the practice of influence seeking that obtain in international relations. Aggregating these voices and issues is an attempt to create a different narrative that harnesses the progress while grasping the future.

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