India is well-positioned to revitalise South-South Cooperation

The United Nations observes September 12 as South-South Cooperation Day. Defined as a ‘development modality where two or more developing countries partner to fulfill their shared or national developmental objective via capacity building, sharing of best practices, technical expertise and transfer of resources', South-South Cooperation is supposed to supplement the existing North-South relations.

Given this, it is critical to assess this co-operative framework in a contemporary global context. In the run-up to the UN Summit of the Future to be held in New York on September 22-23, the world continues to grapple with multiple challenges creating blockades to peace. Developing countries are finding it hard to manoeuvre the geopolitical maze and the consequent development deficit in their socio-political realities.

In this sense, India’s foray into the development stage by hosting the third edition of Voice of the Global South Summit also came at a significant point in history. This can also be translated as an attempt to nurture South-South Cooperation which has lost steam in recent times.

South-South Cooperation has come under the axe for several reasons, one of them being overstretching the decolonisation narrative which may have stalled its real-time impact in the long run.

Understandably, the binding force between the countries of the Global South is their desire to realise similar goals to counter common challenges; however, being placed at different tangents of the development trajectory, their priorities may not always converge. Harmonising these differing goals and establishing collective action is a tough task.

Critics also raise issues of transparency and accountability in projects, effective monitoring, and assessment resulting in a lack of trust among members. There are also concerns of reinforcing a hegemonic influence of certain countries within the Global South, possibly aggravating geopolitical tensions and contestations.

In this sense, China’s increasingly expansive approach in certain geographies like Africa, the Indo-Pacific, and parts of Europe has visibly perturbed the international community. Beijing’s involvement in South-South Cooperation may not represent the real values for which it came into being. Also, putting New Delhi and Beijing in the same bracket as drivers of South-South Cooperation is incorrect.

With different perspectives and praxis, China’s development model is based on a market imperialist strategy aiming to expand its geographic outreach and establish its economic linkages by creating debts and dependencies. In the aftermath of Covid-19 Beijing is attempting to refurbish its global image by stepping into softer sectors such as humanitarian development co-operation, sustainable development, climate change, poverty reduction, and creating resilient food supply chains. However, its foundational development modality remains the same imperialist strategy.

India’s vociferous push for voicing the concerns of the entire Global South as a community, especially through the inclusion of the African Union (AU) in G20, is a pertinent step. This has been welcomed by many nations from the advanced world, including the United States and the European Union. Indeed, many of these nations cannot afford to ignore India for several reasons, such as trade dependence, interlinked supply chains, connectivity concerns, and shifting dynamics of the geopolitical landscape. Undoubtedly, this sets New Delhi apart from Beijing’s approach to development.

In this context, India certainly is in a favourable position to revitalise South-South Cooperation. The rise of plurilaterals, minilaterals, platforms such as G20 and BRICS, and also infrastructural connectivity forums such as the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), the India Israel UAE USA (I2U2), and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) may have possibly overshadowed South-South Cooperation. Yet, it offers India an opportunity to build solidarity, trust, and collective action in the Global South. This also becomes imperative to attain the pressing sustainability challenges, like climate change, ecological protection, just transition and financing for sustainable development.

The time to act is now for India to revitalise its relationship with South-South Cooperation to put in place a definitive post-2030 agenda.

(Swati Prabhu is associate fellow, Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata. X: swatiprabhujnu.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.