The G-20 outing

The Indian Express
July 01, 2019
Editorial

PM Modi’s engagement with world leaders underlined pragmatism and resilience of ties, disproved narratives of crisis.

Modi’s meeting with the US President, Donald Trump, underlined the essential resilience of India’s strategic partnership with the United States.

This year’s annual G-20 summit held in Osaka, Japan, offered an expansive stage for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to kickstart his second international innings. If his first outing after the general elections — which gave him a massive mandate — to Maldives and Sri Lanka was about India’s maritime neighbourhood, the three-day sojourn in Osaka provided an occasion to engage many of his global peers in multiple formats and address burning international questions. Launched in 2008 to cope with the global financial crisis, the G-20 has now become a forum for the discussion of all major international issues and a venue for bilateral exchanges between the world’s top leaders.

Modi’s meeting with the US President, Donald Trump, underlined the essential resilience of India’s strategic partnership with the United States. It disproved the recent narrative that the relationship is in a crisis amidst a large number of contentions including trade, 5G, Iran and Russia. Trump’s tweet, hours before he met Modi, demanding that Delhi withdraw its retaliatory tariffs against American duties on steel and aluminium imports, seemed to confirm the new volatility in bilateral relations. Official readouts from Modi’s meeting with Trump suggested a more business-like discussion. The two leaders agreed to initiate high-level talks to resolve trade disputes and discussed potential collaboration on 5G technologies. The discussion on the Gulf offered the PM an opportunity to lay out India’s interests in oil price stability and its contributions to regional security. Besides the bilateral meeting with Trump, Modi also sat down for a brief trilateral chat with the US President and the Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe.

Even as he sought to institutionalise the trilateral engagement with the US and Japan, Modi met with Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in a trilateral format and again, in a broader BRICS format, with the presidents of Brazil and South Africa. This must not, however, be seen as some kind of a return to non-alignment. It merely reflects India’s necessary pragmatism amid the current fluidity in great power relations. This was reflected in the effort by Xi and Trump to pause their trade war. Equally important was the fact that Russia, China and Brazil were happy to thunder against the US at the BRICS forum, but had no problem joining the Osaka Declaration on cross-border data flows sponsored by Japan. India decided to absent itself at the discussion on data along with Indonesia and South Africa. India’s sherpa to the G-20, Suresh Prabhu, would not explain the decision except stating that the reasons for India’s abstention had been conveyed to the Japanese leadership. On the face of it, the abstention is of a piece with India’s recent drift to so-called “data nationalism”. However, given the growing centrality of the digital economy for India’s growth and Modi’s visible isolation at Osaka, Delhi must take a fresh look at the assumptions behind its current approaches to data governance.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

India Joins Russia in Voting Against West-Backed Move to Expand Powers of OPCW

The Wire: June 28, 2018 New Delhi: India voted against a UK-backed move that will allow the global chemical weapons watchdog to apportion blame for illegal attacks, criticising the decision to grant “unchecked powers” to the head of the group which could be used for “partisan” purposes. On Wednesday, more than two-thirds of the member states of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) voted to authorise the international body to identify the perpetrators and sponsors of a chemical weapons attack. It also specifically called on the OPCW’s technical secretariat to begin work on identifying the perpetrators behind the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The draft decision, sponsored by 30 countries, was adopted at the fourth special session of the conference of the states parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention at the Hague, with 82 in favour and 24 negative votes. While Europe, the United States and their allies voted ‘yes’, there was strong oppo...
Read more

As financial insecurity rises in urban India, so does investment in insurance

Image
Scroll.in March 13, 2020 Urban Indians are becoming less confident about their financial security. Up to 58% of them fret over financial independence post retirement, which is a 4% increase from last year. An equal share of urban Indians worry about meeting their daily medical expenses and sustaining their current lifestyle once they stop working. The findings are part of a survey published by Delhi-based Max Life Insurance in association with London-based consultancy Kantar. The firms surveyed 7,014 respondents in 25 cities, including six metros, nine tier-1 cities, and 10 tier-2 cities, between December 2019 and January 2020. Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz The trends Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz Source: Max Life Insurance via Quartz A significant share of urban Indians also say their families will have no financial support in the event of the breadwinner’s death. In such a scenario, around 57% believe the family sav...
Read more

ED tracks Swiss Bank A/Cs of Agusta scamster

The Poineer February 10,2019 Rakesh K Singh The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has tracked a dozen Swiss bank accounts in the name of Rajiv Saxena, who is key accused in the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam. The ED has also found out accounts held by  his family members and associates where the kickbacks in the now scrapped deal were allegedly parked. Two bank accounts are in the name of Rajiv Saxena’s  associates Pankaj Jain and Sumita Jain who are also the authorised signatories. The  third is in the name of another associate Ajit Singh Bubber, but Rajiv and his family members are authorised signatories. The remaining nine accounts are largely owned and operated by Rajiv, his family members and associates. Rajiv Saxena was deported by the UAE authorities on January 30 and the ED formally arrested him the next day and a court later granted his remand to the agency. He is currently undergoing custodial interrogation by the ED. The agency had in 2017...
Read more