Between Rewards and Risks: India as Host of the 2023 G20 Summit

Abstract

India’s hosting of the 2023 G20 summit presents a number of serious tests. Taking on the presidency of the G20 offers India the prospect of enormous rewards related to an enhanced role in world politics. As this article lays out, however, the hosting function exposes India to risks of three types relating to organisational capacity and status. The highest profile of these risks comes from the changing external environment under which the New Delhi G20 will meet, set against a background of complicating geopolitical tensions. Moreover, beyond the highly charged stakes attached to this shifting external context, the basic organisational responsibilities of holding the presidency of the G20 in New Delhi present a second serious challenge. The hosting function comes with enormous logistical issues that are especially sensitive for India in terms of peer status. Hosting a global summit of this type—that is to say, an institution constructed without the cushion of legitimacy attached to formal international organisations—is also complicated by India’s self-identity. Performing the role of host conveys a message of India’s equality of peer status vis-à-vis the other structurally important members in the G20. Nonetheless, in playing up this (insider) side of India’s identity, the other side of India’s (outsider) identity that privileges India’s solidarity with the Global South and the privileging of aspirational multilateralism through the United Nations (UN) is potentially compromised. My article has two intertwined purposes. On the one hand, it examines the major tests that exist for India regarding the contextual, procedural, and institutional meaning dynamics of the G20, analysing the differentiated nature and implications of each of these challenges in turn. On the other hand, the article offers some insights concerning the techniques of how India has either addressed (or could address) the three tests and so ensure a positive reception for the summit process.