When Prime Minister Narendra Modi touches down in Johannesburg later this week for the G20 Leaders’ Summit, he enters not just another multilateral gathering but a scene charged with geopolitical significance.
This is the fourth consecutive G20, or Group of 20 of the world’s largest economies, which is being held in the Global South, a fact that subtly but unmistakably underlines the centre of gravity in world affairs.
For India, which has spent the past decade positioning itself as both a bridge and a counterweight in an increasingly fractured international order, the stakes for the November-end meeting could not be higher.
Modi is slated to speak at all three summit sessions, confer with several leaders on the margins, and join the India–Brazil–South Africa (IBSA) meeting, a format that carries echoes of an older, more idealistic era of South-South cooperation.
However, Johannesburg is not about nostalgia.
It is about power. It’s about which countries gets to influence the rules by which the world will function in this 21st-century landscape defined by climate shocks, digital flux, and resource insecurity. The G7 or the ‘Rich Man’s Club’ used to define most of the rules by which the world’s economic order was run till a Wall Street-crash induced recession forced the larger G20 to take on the task of defining global economic order.
The non-G7 members of the G20, who represent the global South now account for a third of the world’s economy as against 15 per cent share of global GDP they accounted for at the turn of the century. And they want more heft in determining the way the world is run. The world economy may no longer be in freefall, but debt distress continues to be bane for many developing nations, especially across Africa.
An old debt architecture, designed in the Bretton Woods era, collides with new creditors and opaque lending practices, creating friction and distress in many African and other Third World countries. Beyond the summit floor, Modi’s participation in the IBSA Leaders’ Meeting serves as a reminder that India still sees democratic multilateralism among developing nations as a vital counterweight to China-led forums.
India wants IBSA to be more than a nostalgic relic, to function as a strategic coalition that can shape debates on development, trade, climate, and governance. India along with South Africa and Brazil also seeks a more equitable system, one that lowers the temperature on the Global South’s debt vulnerabilities and expands access to development financing for poorer nations.
Delhi is betting that, with the African union now a full G20 member, a diplomatic breakthrough India vocally championed during its 2023 presidency, the moment is ripe to take advantage of this political shift and turn it into institutional practice. More African voices at the table could force the G20 to treat development challenges as systemic failures rather than occasional emergencies.
If the G20 is to be a steering committee for the world, India is arguing, the world must be more fully present in it. Climate politics within the G20 has become a delicate balancing act. In Johannesburg, India is expected to push for more predictable climate financing, technology transfer, and recognition that development and decarbonization must advance together. The subtext is clear — the political cost of energy transitions cannot fall hardest on countries that contributed least to the crisis. Few issues carry as much long-term weight as the competition for critical minerals. These obscure-sounding commodities, lithium, cobalt, rare earths, are the skeleton of clean energy systems and digital economies. India depends heavily on single-source imports, especially from China, a vulnerability that policymakers increasingly view with unease.
Delhi’s hope at Johannesburg is to secure endorsement for a G20 Critical Minerals Framework. That would bring about rules for transparent mining, diversified supply chains, and value addition in developing countries rather than extraction-driven exploitation. This is one issue where the West as well as the Global South, may well be in agreement—except perhaps the two largest economies of the world – China and the US — who control most of the critical mineral production in the world. Artificial intelligence, its governance, risks, and opportunities, will remain another battleground for influence.
The world has drifted into regulatory fragmentation. The United States focuses on innovation and risk mitigation; Europe on rights and strict oversight; China on state-directed control. Delhi is consequently pushing for a new framework emphasizsng transparency, safety, and equitable access. A global architecture that is neither Silicon Valley laissez-faire nor Beijing-managed centralization fits neatly with India’s desire to shape emerging techno-governance regimes.
India’s argument is that healthcare algorithms should not privilege rich countries; training data should not encode Global North biases; and developing nations must participate in global standard-setting, not merely comply with it. Whether this will come about or merely remain a paper dream, is of course something which only time will tell.
