Champion Of Global South, PM Modi Attends G7 Summit

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has acted correctly in attending rather than in rejecting the invite of Canadian PM Mark Carney.

- M.D. NALAPAT

Under PM Mark Carney, thankfully very different from Justin Trudeau, the Canadian government has sent an invite to PM Narendra Modi to attend the G7 Summit at a picturesque mountain location in that scenic country.

The invite, inter alia, underscores the importance of India, and PM Modi, in the present era. Other G7 leaders, including Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron, would have found the absence of PM Modi at the seventh consecutive G7 summit he will be attending inexplicable.

Possibly along with Carney, they recognize the importance of having India at the table, if their deliberations are to be taken seriously by the Global South in particular.

Within the G7, apart from the US, Japan has broken with the other members in beginning to appreciate the futility of endlessly supporting Ukraine in an unwinnable war.

PM Shigeru Ishiba has sought to repair the damage to his country and its economy by banning for more than three years the import of Russian crude oil, and has now resumed supplies.

If Chancellor Friedrich Merz has any concern for the once-power packed German economy, he will follow Ishiba.

Banning oil imports from Russia has tipped the economy onto a downward slope.

Following the example of Japan has become an imperative for him if he is to prevent irreversible damage to the German economy.

Had these powers, and the US under President Joe Biden, followed the advice given then by PM Modi, the Ukraine war would have been over in April 2022 itself with an armistice that would have preserved the land Ukraine has lost to Russia since then.

The UK under Boris Johnson and the US under Joe Biden offered a blank cheque to Volodymyr Zelenskyy were he to continue the war, which he did.

While Starmer is still spending money on Ukraine that Labour voters think should go to them, Donald Trump has withdrawn the blank cheque and has made Ukraine pay cash on delivery instead.