India’s rising geopolitical clout will be tested as it hosts the G20 summit

BY KRUTIKA PATHI

Ahead of India’s hosting of the G20 summit of leading economies, its prime minister invited 125 mostly developing countries to a virtual meeting in January to signal New Delhi’s intention to be their champion on the world stage.

As the leaders logged onto Zoom, Prime Minister Narendra Modi listed major challenges he said could be better addressed if developing countries had a bigger share in the emerging global order: the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, terrorism, the war in Ukraine.

“The world is in a state of crisis,” Modi said. “Most of the global challenges have not been created by the Global South. But they affect us more.”

India has pledged to amplify the voice of the so-called Global South — a wide of expanse of mostly developing countries, many of them former colonies, in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Oceania and the Caribbean.

That pledge