The G20 summit concluded in New Delhi today with an outcome that looked surprisingly conventional considering how divided its members have become. The group produced a consensus declaration despite disagreements over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, admitted the African Union as a permanent member, and announced plans for a new economic corridor connecting India with Europe through the Middle East. Narendra Modi’s government will understandably present the summit as evidence that India’s international influence is increasing, but the more interesting question is what kind of influence India is attempting to construct. New Delhi does not appear to want to replace one alliance with another. It wants to become important enough that several competing centres of power need to work with it simultaneously.
The Ukraine language illustrates this strategy. Last year’s G20 declaration in Bali stated that “most members strongly condemned” the war in Ukraine. The New Delhi declaration avoids directly condemning Russia and instead emphasises principles including territorial integrity, sovereignty and the inadmissibility of using force for territorial acquisition. Ukraine criticised the wording, while Russia welcomed the absence of an explicit condemnation. Yet obtaining any consensus at all required reconciling governments whose positions on the war differ fundamentally. India effectively prioritised preserving the G20 as a functioning institution over producing the strongest possible statement against Moscow.
That choice deserves scrutiny because consensus is not automatically valuable. A declaration sufficiently vague to satisfy everyone can become diplomatically elegant but politically empty. International organisations sometimes preserve unity by reducing agreements towards the least controversial language all participants can tolerate. The institution survives, but its capacity for collective action declines. The relevant question is therefore not simply whether India achieved consensus but what the consensus enables governments to do that they could not do separately.
Yet the opposite approach also carries costs. If the G20 became primarily another forum for confrontation between Russia and Western governments, developing countries would reasonably question why an organisation created to coordinate global economic policy had become another arena dominated by European security politics. Ukraine is enormously important, but G20 members also face debt distress, climate financing, food security, development, digital infrastructure and reform of multilateral financial institutions. India has spent much of its presidency arguing that these issues deserve greater political attention.
This is where the phrase “Global South” becomes strategically useful to India. New Delhi wants to present itself as a country capable of translating developing-country concerns into institutions where the United States, Europe, China and other major powers are present. The admission of the African Union as a permanent G20 member is therefore more than ceremonial. Africa contains more than 1.4 billion people but previously participated in the G20 permanently only through South Africa. Giving the continental organisation a seat increases formal representation for states historically underrepresented in global economic governance.
Representation does not automatically produce power, however. The African Union having a chair at the table does not guarantee that African governments receive greater financing, better debt restructuring or more influence over IMF and World Bank decisions. Institutional inclusion becomes meaningful when it changes outcomes. The next test is therefore whether G20 reform translates into changes in development finance and voting power rather than simply a more representative photograph.
India benefits from pushing this agenda because it strengthens a particular claim about its own identity. China is richer, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and already a much larger source of infrastructure financing across developing countries. India cannot compete with Beijing simply by offering more money. It can instead compete politically by presenting itself as a developing country that understands the concerns of other developing countries while possessing enough scale to negotiate with richer powers.
That is a different form of leadership.
It depends less on hierarchy and more on brokerage.
A broker gains influence because actors who disagree with one another trust or need the broker enough to continue negotiating through them. India’s relationships make that role unusually plausible. It belongs to BRICS with China and Russia, the Quad with the United States, Japan and Australia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and now hosts a G20 summit involving all of them. It purchases Russian oil while deepening defence cooperation with Washington. It competes militarily with China while trading extensively with it.
From a traditional alliance perspective, this can look inconsistent.
From a bargaining perspective, it creates options.
The more relationships India can maintain simultaneously, the more expensive it becomes for any single partner to demand complete alignment. Washington cannot easily threaten to abandon India over Russian oil when it also views India as strategically important in balancing China. Russia cannot assume permanent Indian loyalty when New Delhi can increasingly purchase Western defence technology. China cannot treat India merely as another developing-country partner when both compete for influence across Asia.
This is strategic autonomy converted into bargaining power.
The principle resembles diversification in economics. A company dependent on one customer possesses less bargaining power than one selling to several. A country dependent on one great power faces similar constraints. India attempts to diversify geopolitical relationships so disagreement with one partner does not produce strategic isolation.
That does not mean India can remain neutral on everything forever. Strategic autonomy works best when partners believe India is independent, not unreliable. If New Delhi avoids taking positions whenever costs appear, other governments may eventually discount Indian commitments. Autonomy therefore requires enough consistency that partners can predict which interests India considers fundamental.
The border with China provides one such limit. India may cooperate with Beijing through BRICS and the G20, but the military confrontation along the Line of Actual Control fundamentally shapes Indian security policy. Chinese President Xi Jinping did not attend the New Delhi summit, sending Premier Li Qiang instead. Whatever the reasons for Xi’s absence, the relationship between Asia’s two largest powers remains deeply strained.
This is why India is unlikely to accept a Chinese-led version of multipolarity. New Delhi wants a world containing several centres of power, one of which is India. Replacing American predominance with Chinese predominance would not satisfy that objective.
The distinction is important because “multipolarity” can mean different things depending on who uses the word. Russia often invokes it as opposition to American dominance. China presents it as part of a more representative international order. India supports a more distributed system but has no interest in becoming subordinate to either Moscow or Beijing.
Multipolarity is attractive to rising powers because it increases their strategic room.
It can also make collective action harder.
A unipolar system can be unfair but decisive when one state possesses enough power to provide public goods or enforce rules. A multipolar system distributes authority more broadly but requires greater negotiation because several actors can block outcomes.
The G20 declaration demonstrates both sides of that trade-off. India successfully preserved consensus because it negotiated language several geopolitical camps could accept. The resulting statement is necessarily weaker on Ukraine than many Western governments and Kyiv would have preferred.
More representation can mean less coherence.
That does not make it undesirable.
It means institutional legitimacy and institutional effectiveness can pull in opposite directions.
The newly announced India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor provides a more material example of India’s strategy. The proposal would connect India with Gulf states and Europe through shipping and railway infrastructure, involving countries including the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and European partners. It is already being compared with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The comparison is useful but should not be exaggerated. A memorandum announcing a corridor is not the same thing as completed infrastructure. China’s Belt and Road has existed for a decade and financed projects across dozens of countries. IMEC currently represents an intention whose financing, routes and implementation still need substantial development.
Infrastructure diplomacy should be evaluated through concrete assets rather than maps presented at summits.
If implemented, however, the corridor could matter because trade infrastructure changes economic geography. Reducing transport costs between India, the Gulf and Europe could increase commerce while creating supply chains less dependent on routes or infrastructure associated with China. Gulf states would gain another role as logistical bridges between Asian and European markets.
This demonstrates how geopolitics increasingly operates through connectivity rather than territorial control. Great powers compete over ports, railways, digital networks, energy infrastructure and supply chains because controlling or influencing the systems through which goods and information move creates long-term economic relationships.
China understood this early through the Belt and Road Initiative. The United States and its partners increasingly appear to be responding with alternative infrastructure strategies rather than relying purely on military alliances.
For developing countries, competition between infrastructure providers can be beneficial. More potential financiers mean more options and potentially better terms. The danger is that infrastructure becomes selected according to geopolitical symbolism rather than economic viability.
A railway does not become productive because it appears on a map connecting friendly countries.
Traffic, costs, financing and complementary infrastructure still matter.
This is where India should avoid confusing geopolitical enthusiasm with economic fundamentals. Its greatest opportunity is not simply becoming the western endpoint of an anti-China corridor. It is using several competing partnerships to reduce logistics costs and increase the productivity of Indian manufacturing.
That connects directly to Modi’s Washington visit in June. Strategic relationships become economically valuable when they generate technology, investment and infrastructure rather than merely diplomatic recognition.
The same principle applies to India’s Global South strategy. Hosting summits and advocating representation creates political capital, but developing countries will judge Indian leadership through material outcomes. Can India support cheaper digital infrastructure, affordable medicines, development finance and climate adaptation? Can it advocate reforms giving poorer countries more influence over debt negotiations and multilateral institutions?
Leadership requires providing something others value.
Otherwise “voice of the Global South” becomes branding.
India’s own development experience gives it potential advantages. Its digital public infrastructure, pharmaceutical industry and experience delivering programmes at enormous scale can produce forms of cooperation different from China’s infrastructure-heavy model or Western aid programmes. New Delhi does not need to reproduce either.
This is another benefit of multipolarity when it works well: different powers compete through different comparative advantages.
The danger is that India overstates its ability to represent a category as diverse as the Global South. Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Nigeria and other major developing states possess their own interests and leadership ambitions. No country elected India to speak for them collectively.
A more credible claim is that India can amplify issues shared by many developing countries, not represent every developing country’s position.
That distinction preserves agency.
It also prevents Global South politics from becoming another hierarchy in which one large state claims authority over smaller ones while criticising Western dominance for doing something similar.
The summit therefore represents a useful test of what Indian power might look like as the country becomes richer. Great powers traditionally demonstrate influence by compelling others to follow them. India’s current strategy relies more heavily on making itself difficult to exclude.
That may be better suited to the emerging international system.
A country that can talk to Washington, Moscow, Riyadh, Brussels and governments across Africa simultaneously occupies political space unavailable to states locked tightly inside one bloc.
The value comes from the network.
This resembles betweenness centrality in network theory: an actor can become influential not simply because it possesses the most resources but because it sits between other actors whose relationships pass through it. Diplomatic brokerage can therefore magnify material power.
India is not powerful enough to dictate outcomes to the G20.
It may be powerful enough to make agreement harder without its participation and easier with it.
That is a significant change from the international position India occupied thirty years ago.
The economic foundations still matter. Diplomatic influence built faster than domestic economic capability can become fragile. India’s GDP per capita remains far below that of established great powers, infrastructure and human-capital challenges remain substantial, and its ability to provide international public goods is therefore constrained.
Population creates potential.
Growth creates resources.
Institutions convert resources into state capacity.
Diplomacy then converts state capacity into influence.
Skipping any stage produces exaggerated claims about national power.
This is why I would interpret the G20 summit as evidence of India’s increasing diplomatic leverage rather than proof that India has already become a superpower. New Delhi successfully hosted a deeply divided organisation, obtained consensus, elevated African representation and placed infrastructure connectivity at the centre of the agenda.
Those are real achievements.
They do not eliminate India’s constraints.
The most interesting part is the strategy connecting them. India increasingly appears unwilling to choose between being a Western partner, BRICS member, Russian partner, Chinese competitor or representative of developing-country concerns.
It wants to occupy all of those positions simultaneously.
That strategy will sometimes produce accusations of inconsistency.
It will sometimes force India into uncomfortable compromises, as the Ukraine language demonstrates.
But in a world where power is becoming more distributed, refusing permanent alignment can itself create leverage if enough other states need your cooperation.
The twentieth century rewarded countries for choosing the right bloc.
The emerging system may increasingly reward countries capable of operating between several.
India’s G20 presidency suggests New Delhi intends to test that proposition.
