It’s totally my fault. I’ve become immune to any face peering out of posters, vaccine certificates, food packets. As a result, like the statutory warning image of a horrific close-up of some gruesome disease a smoker ends up having on cigarette packets becoming invisible to smokers, I end up not seeing the posters, vaccine certificates, food packets at all.
I am told that G20 – or, more respectfully, G20ji – is a group of 20 countries that were formed in 1999 after a series of economic crises. The member countries are 20 of the world’s richest, contributing 85% of the global GDP. This year, it was India’s turn to be president and we shall be hosting the main event in September in Delhi.
Many commentators have extolled this as ‘a great win for India’. But leading and hosting G20, it seems, is a job that every member country has to take on by rotation. So, it’s a bit like a class where every student gets to be the class monitor in turn, rather than being ‘awarded’ the job. So, some can argue that if it has taken India 24 years to sit at the head of the G20 table that has 20 chairs, then we’re actually a couple of years behind. The teacher calling your name out during the attendance roll-call isn’t quite the same as coming first in class.
Be that as it may, the foreign delegates this year are in for a treat. One meeting will be held in every state of India. Which effectively means that India in 2023 will have more foreigners in pagdis and bindis than we saw in Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ wedding.
The tagline for G20 2023 is ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’. With India being one of the most vulnerable nations in terms of climate change, it bodes well to put the future at the centre of all G20 conversations. But this ‘Mummy, Papa, Chachu of democracy’ and ‘one family’ narrative is a bit weird. I really don’t need the whole world to be my family, since I already have one. I don’t need 75 million more uncles asking me when I’ll get married, or 75 million more aunties pointing out that I have put on weight recently.
At work, too, I am instantly suspicious of any boss who tells me, ‘We’re like family’. Because I know demands for overtime and underpay will be coming in. And let’s face it, when was the last time everyone in a family agreed with each other over anything? This year’s G20 meetings have also been beset by familial problems. India is hosting all these rich cousins at home, and none of them want to get along. Consider India supporting Russia‘s request to not call what is happening in Ukraine a ‘war’. Alternate suggestions are ‘skirmish,’ ‘siege’ and ‘situation’. This reminds me of the time when my bhua and fufaji nearly had a divorce over whether their new born son should be called ‘Aaryan’ or ‘Aryan’.
Our cousins who live up the street, China, with whom we have a long-running ‘property dispute‘, will be present, too. All ‘swift and divisive’ actions promised by the government have taken a backseat. For now, we are standing in the kitchen complaining about the number of samosas they have eaten, and how we cannot say anything now, or it will seem rude.
The thing that has truly defined this G20 is commentators in the US and Europe realising that the global north is not the centre of the world anymore. The global south and its leaders are asserting their own demands. Where that puts Santa in the North Pole and the penguins in the South is still unclear. What is less unclear is that the one roof we share over all our heads will only get cleaned if we all are able to find a way for the north, south, east and west to work together if there is any future – common or otherwise – to be had.
