The G20 Leaders’ Summit is the most high-profile gathering of national leaders in the world. Each year it brings together under one roof, the heads of 19 countries that, together with the European Union, are responsible for over 90% of the global GDP. Over the course of this weekend, the 2023 summit is taking place in New Delhi, marking the culmination of India’s presidency of the G20. No matter what happens hereafter, this weekend will forever be remembered as the start of a new phase of Indian diplomacy.
Even for someone as immersed in the DPI ecosystem as me, the sheer number of DPIs already operational around the world came as a pleasant surprise. (HT archive)
In the run-up to the summit, much ink had been spilt on how difficult it would be for India to arrive at any sort of consensus. It was pointed out how difficult it is, even at the best of times, to get 20 nations that are geopolitically and ideologically misaligned with each other, to agree on a common agenda. To attempt to do so when the whole world was grappling with a number of extraordinary challenges — from the war in Ukraine to the ever-present threat of climate change — was, many believed, next to impossible. Which is why, even before the summit began, many had already written off the time and money India had spent on its G20 presidency as well and truly wasted. When news arrived that both the Chinese and the Russian Presidents would not be attending the summit in person, it seemed that any last chance we might have had of brokering an agreement was gone.
And then, halfway through Day 1 of the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the New Delhi Leader’s Declaration had been officially adopted by all the member countries. India’s G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant confirmed that this was an unprecedented global consensus with no dissents, footnotes or chair summaries. With 112 outcomes and presidency documents, the substantive output of this G20 was three times that of previous presidencies.
That all this was achieved in a shorter time frame and in the face of more challenges than normal, is a testament to the polite, yet firm diplomacy that has characterised India’s stewardship of the G20 this year. By getting member nations to endorse fresh solutions to traditional problems, it has demonstrated a new form of leadership on the global stage.
Take, for example, the Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) agenda that India pushed as one of its presidency priorities across various G20 working groups. As of last week, in both the Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG) as well as in the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI), member countries unanimously endorsed all of India’s DPI proposals. In the GPFI working group, this has resulted in a 78-page report setting out a set of detailed Policy Recommendations for Advancing Financial Inclusion and Productivity Gains through DPI.
The fact that Indian negotiators managed to secure a consensus across all member countries on a report of such depth and significance — that too over a far shorter time period than would normally have been available to them — is a feat of diplomacy that is not being spoken about enough.
The GPFI report starts out by acknowledging the progress that has already been made on financial inclusion around the world — and then goes on to state that despite this, over 1.4 billion adults are still excluded. It points, in addition, to the significant financing gap that exists in micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), especially those owned by women. To bridge these gaps and accelerate development, it argues for using open, interoperable, and inclusive digital public infrastructure — such as those that have been successfully deployed in India. The report endorses what many of us in India have been saying for a long time: that DPIs can amplify the gains that would otherwise have taken years (sometimes decades) to achieve by reducing transaction costs, encouraging innovation, and promoting competition.
The report makes two important contributions. First, it sets out a list of best practices for developing well-designed DPI that countries looking to build these systems can use while going about designing them. These include the need for these DPI to be designed to be interoperable — not only with each other, but also with the digital systems of the private and public entities that connect to them; to be adaptable and extensible so that they can rapidly respond to evolutions in technology as well as the demand for new products and services; and to use of privacy-enhancing-technologies so that these systems can be trustworthy. Above all, it recognises the role of the private sector in promoting a culture of innovation, recommending coordination between the public and private sectors in order that consumers get services that are always best-in-class.
The second, and just as important contribution of the report, is the extensive list of country case studies it has set out, documenting, possibly for the first time in one place, the broad range of digital infrastructure that countries around the world have already deployed in order to achieve financial inclusion. rahul It is hard to appreciate, just from reading the publications that have come out of the G20, what an impressive achievement this is. Brand new global initiatives usually take time before they can achieve the level of credibility necessary in order to be endorsed by all the member nations of the G20. Diplomats looking to build consensus around a new idea usually have to craft complex, multi-year strategies to achieve that objective. This often involves innocuously seeding the idea in a related workstream and then gradually building on it — often across successive meetings over many years — till it finally accumulates enough broad consensus to be elevated to a priority.
As little as a year ago, digital public infrastructure was a term that was used by very few outside of a wonkish niche at the intersection of technology and public policy. It was regularly confused with digital public goods and the full extent of all that it encompassed was poorly understood. By the end of India’s G20 presidency, not only has the term cemented its place in the global policy lexicon, but many concepts that undergird its deployment have been endorsed by the most powerful nations of the world. That India was able, in such a short period of time, to build such broad consensus around this concept is a testament to the quiet but tenacious diplomacy it has displayed over the course of the G20.
When people question whether all that India has invested in the G20 this year is really worth it, I point them to these achievements. For as long as I can remember, we have limited ourselves to reviewing the rules others have framed, at best suggesting amendments to them to suit our domestic interests. For the first time, we have taken a uniquely Indian idea, packaged, crafted and presented it on the global stage and, with quiet confidence, convinced the nations of the world to accept and endorse our vision.
With its DPI agenda, India has transformed itself from a rule-taker to a rule-maker.
Rahul Matthan is partner, Trilegal. The views expressed are personal
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