India’s internal arguments about its presence at the G7 summit betray a certain ignorance about the shifting political landscape in North America and Europe and a lack of awareness of India’s growing salience for the G7.
Congress party’s criticism that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has travelled to the G7 to burnish his international image must be taken as part of the sparring between a newly charged-up Opposition and the government that has come back with a reduced majority. All global summits are photo-ops for national leaders everywhere to display their global reach to domestic audiences. The leaders of the seven western nations and invited special guests from across the world for the outreach session showed up in picturesque eastern Italy after all the arduous work, including the drafting of final statements, was done by their diplomats. All they needed to do was to look good and shake hands with other leaders. Having said that, the fact is PM Modi did not have to do anything special in Italy to enhance his image.
Winning a third term as prime minister was more than enough to raise his prestige among his peers in the West and beyond. At the summit, Modi looked tall given the precarious situation the G7 leaders find themselves in. In the US, President Joe Biden is struggling to fend off the challenge from Donald Trump who might well win the presidential election in November. In Canada, Justin Trudeau has become unpopular and will be lucky to win another term. Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is all set to lead the Tories to a defeat in the general election set for July 4. On the continent, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz are being battered by a resurgent political right. In Japan, PM Fumio Kishida has poor ratings and is coping with the fallout from corruption scandals involving party colleagues. The only exception is Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who is emerging as a powerful new voice in Europe. Unsparing western commentators have compared the G7 leadership crew at Italy to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and dubbed it as “Meloni and the six lame ducks”.
India’s internal arguments about its presence at the G7 summit betray a certain ignorance about the shifting political landscape in North America and Europe and a lack of awareness of India’s growing salience for the G7. American and European analysts point to the growing weaknesses of the West and its internal divisions and critics bemoan the fecklessness of its current leadership. Meanwhile, India’s position in relation to the West is rising thanks to its economic growth and its geopolitical role as a “swing state”. Next year, India’s aggregate GDP is expected to overtake Japan’s and, a couple of years later, Germany’s. That would put the size of India’s economy ahead of all G7 countries except the US. The deepening geopolitical tensions with Beijing, the imperatives of restructuring the global economic order to reduce dependence on China, and the need for the US and Europe to reconnect with the Global South have all created the conditions for a new strategic compact between India and the West. The challenge for the political class and the policy establishment in Delhi is to reflect on the contours of such a compact and the strategies for leveraging it to generate greater prosperity for the Indian people.
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