As president, India has opened G20 to countries with smaller economies and higher developmental challenges ‘whose voices often go unheard’. It has been at the forefront of the move to enlarge membership to the African Union (AU). From bringing together 125 countries not part of G20 to focusing on unlocking predictable development and climate finance for developing countries, India’s intention is to ensure that the world’s biggest economies listen to the concerns and needs of those usually left outside the room with the chandelier. By doing away with a euphemism that fails to recognise the spectrum of countries that happen to mostly fall in the planet’s torrid zone, G20 will do its cause a mighty favour by breaking an unhelpful binary.
Over the decades, China, as the most economically successful developing country, sought to transform the ‘global south’ as its arena, feeding into a big power contest with the US. By deploying the term, India strays away from its own conviction of the necessity and desirability for multipolarity. India’s intent is to channel and provide a platform to voices that must be heard across platforms, including G20. ‘Global south’ – like that old Orientalist construct, ‘the Orient’ – permanentises this developed-developing schism through a dated categorisation. Words are idea-containers and idea-perpetuators. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take India’s decolonising spree one step further in the global context and call for G20 giving the term ‘global south’ the short shrift.
