India's G20 presidency: Let's be more ambitious

While G20 communiques prove elusive, India has little time left to get a better deal for the Global South. The effort to reform institutions must cover World Bank and IMF ownership

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G20 meetings seem to be degenerating into a juvenile game of passing the parcel. Most theme-oriented working groups have been unable to agree on a communique, with the task left to non-controversial huddles, like on startups. Even the third meeting under the G20 aegis of finance ministers and central bank governors (FMCBGs), which ended in Gandhinagar on Tuesday, issued only an outcome document and a chair’s summary. A communique requires consensus, but the Ukraine shadow has split the gathering along sharply drawn lines, hurting prospects of unanimity. And so, the chair of the second-most important G20 grouping, Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, exercised the next best option: the gathering passed that buck to the leaders’ summit in September. What is encouraging, though, is the fact that the FMCBG meeting was united on almost every other item on the agenda, which included reforms of multilateral development banks (MDBs), a shared regulatory framework for crypto-assets, the path ahead for eq