Determined to lead & succeed

K. P. Nayar

Strategic Analyst

WHAT a difference one year makes! In August 2021, India assumed the presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the first time during its ongoing two-year term as an elected member. During that rotating tenure, when TS Tirumurti, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, was the president of the council for a month, PM Modi distinguished himself as the first Indian PM to preside over an open debate. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar chaired another open debate and a briefing on threats from terrorist acts. Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla presided over another briefing on the Middle East and the Palestinian question.

The overall feeling in India is that the UN is paralysed by turf wars on vital matters among global institutions headquartered in New York, Washington and Geneva.

On December 1, India again took charge of the council’s presidency for the second and last time before the country exits the world’s high table. India’s term in the council ends on the last day of this month. Unlike in August last year, India is now overwhelmingly focused on its one-year presidency of the G20, which also began on December 1. Such is the preoccupation with it that Ruchira Kamboj, the new Permanent Representative in New York, talked about this favourite grouping at her briefing on the assumption of Security Council presidency. ‘The world looks to the G20 with much hope...We see both these presidencies, that of the Security Council for this month and the G20 for the next one year, as a new responsibility for ourselves. We will try our utmost to ensure that the hopes and expectations of the global community are met.’ At the time of writing, Modi has no plans to address the Security Council before India’s membership ends. But he chose to attend the G20 Summit in Bali a fortnight before India’s stewardship of the Security Council began. On the day India assumed the G20’s chairmanship, Modi expressed himself on this grouping in a mass-circulated essay.

‘Can the G20 go further? Can we catalyse a fundamental mindset shift, to benefit humanity as a whole?’ the PM asked. He made two points: ‘During our G20 presidency, we shall present India’s experiences, learnings and models as possible templates for others, particularly the developing world. Our G20 priorities will be shaped in consultation with not just our G20 partners, but also our fellow-travellers in the Global South, whose voice often goes unheard.’ It is clear from his enunciation that India intends to use this presidency to go beyond the UN, perhaps go so far as to broad-base and develop the G20 into a parallel world body, even a substitute for the UN, which is increasingly under fire as moribund and ineffective.

Why? Part of the answer is in Kamboj’s briefing. ‘It is very clear that the UN of today is far from reflective of the true diversity of the UN’s wider membership. Twenty-two years after world leaders called for comprehensive UN Security Council reforms, we have not moved an inch. And there is even a lack of a negotiating text.’ Her assertion reflects India’s frustration on the absence of progress towards expanding the council to include India and its long-time partners in this effort — Brazil, Germany and Japan. India also wants the global development architecture, the international trading systems, the financial and monetary frameworks — all of which are now mostly outside the UN — to acquire greater coherence and relevance to humanity at large: the overall feeling in New Delhi is that the G20 is better suited to do this than the UN, which is paralysed by turf wars on such matters among global institutions headquartered in New York, Washington and Geneva.

In this context, a differing, two-track approach by Jaishankar appears to be emerging on India’s engagement of the UN, on the one hand, and the G20 on the other. Since the UN is stalemated on most issues or has window-dressed differences without producing substantive solutions, India appears to be lowering its expectations from the world body and making it a platform for soft power diplomacy. With the G20, however, the country harbours higher hopes. When Mahatma Gandhi’s bust was unveiled last week on the north lawns of the UN headquarters, it came as a surprise to many that a Gandhi depiction in some form had not been there all these years. It has been an astonishing omission by the world body just as the Mahatma was not given the Nobel Peace Prize for his ‘inspiration for the entire humanity’, as Jaishankar said during the unveiling. Promotion of millets is another soft option that India will champion at the UN in 2023, which is the International Year of Millets. Kamboj has promised several events at the UN to underline that ‘millets are very healthy and environment-friendly’.

As Tirumurti said last year while assuming the council’s presidency, ‘Counter-terrorism is a national priority for us...We will continue to keep the spotlight on this matter, both inside the council and outside.’ Such intense and sustained spotlighting got dividends a year later when India succeeded in bringing the UN to Mumbai recently to remind the world of the heinous terror attack on the city on November 26, 2008. It was a landmark victory for Indian diplomacy that the commemoration in Mumbai was the first time that the council’s Counter Terrorism Committee (CTC) met outside New York in seven years. It was also the very first time that the CTC met in India. As part of the two-track approach, India will continue to use the UN platform for national priorities, like counterterrorism and peacekeeping.

Behind closed doors, India is likely to use the G20 platform to broker peace in Ukraine. Fear of failure in such a daring initiative will keep any peace-making secret until it has a chance of success. The Russian statement on Modi’s conversation on December 16 with President Putin read: ‘At the request of Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin gave fundamental assessments of Russia’s line on the Ukrainian direction.’ This significant line, pregnant with possibilities, was understandably missing from the Indian statement.

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