India rallies ‘one-world’ cry at the G-7 summit

The most powerful and influential of global groupings, the Group of 7 (G-7), comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States met at Cornwall, the hub of green technology in the UK. The group was previously known as G-8 until Russia was suspended in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea.

This year apart from the European Union representatives, India, South Korea and Australia were invited as well. The choice of the invitees is noteworthy, as the 2021 summit is being portrayed as the Coalition of Democracies to “counter and compete” with China. The US National security Advisor Jake Sullivan minced no words when he said that “China represents a significant change to the world’s democracies”. Following the Covid outbreak, the world’s leading democracies have been demanding a more transparent and rule-based order, in a veiled attack on China’s authoritarian ways in engaging with neighbours, specially in the Indo-Pacific, and inability to provide a convincing explanation to the origins of the virus.

India, as the world’s largest democracy, has been deepening its ties with the West in recent years, including the G-7 members. As a natural ally for the West, India defends “shared values from authoritarianism, terrorism and violent extremism, disinformation and infodemics and economic coercion,” said P. Harish, MEA Secretary (economic relations).

As a special invitee, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered his address in the “Open Societies and Open Economies” session championing the “One Earth, One Health” approach aimed at forging global unity and solidarity to counter the pandemic. He also emphasized on the need to keep raw materials for vaccines easily accessible. India’s vaccine production was impeded in the middle of the third wave due to shortage of raw materials from the US, causing misgivings between the two sides briefly.

It is important to underline here that India, which currently battles with the third wave, had supplied PPEs, medicines and vaccines to over 135 countries—driven by its Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (world is one family) global philosophy. The shortage of vaccines in the wake of the third wave has been widely criticised by Modi’s critics and the opposition, but in his G-7 pitch, PM Modi again upheld these ideals.

PM Modi also said, “tech companies and social media platforms” to ensure a “safe cyber environment”, triggered by his government’s deepening differences over regulatory issues with Facebook, Twitter and other social media and technology companies.

PM Modi reminded that for preventing future pandemics a lot rests on the shoulders of ‘democratic and transparent societies’, which conforms to the G-7 approach towards building a new, transparent, rule-based and peaceful post-Covid world order. In the Cornwall G-7 summit, China has been reprimanded over human rights violations in Xinjiang, crackdown on the prodemocracy protestors in Hong Kong and tensions in the Taiwan Straits. Taiwan, which could not become a member of the World Health Organization owing to China’s opposition, is quite pleased with the Taiwan-friendly sentiments characterising the G-7 summit.

The G-7 members have proposed a minimum of 15% of tax at place of sales, and not where the multinational companies are physically based. In sum, the summit is significant for addressing issues related to international security, global economic recovery, covid 19 recovery and tax avoidance by big multinational companies.