How India Scaled Mt G20: A Revealing Account That Glosses Over the Complexity

A couple of months before India was to host the Group of 20 summit in 2023, Delhi, the venue, was in the middle of a metamorphosis. Amid a blitz of refurbishing and beautification, another kind of preparation that had started months earlier was underway—negotiations and back-channel diplomacy that anchored the summit but remained out of public view. This is the gap that Amitabh Kant tries to fill in How India Scaled Mt G20: The Inside Story of the G20 Presidency by granting readers access to the green room of the summit.

In his account, Kant, who was India’s G20 sherpa—a personal representative of a leader of a member state—goes into the responsibilities of his role, the details of pre-summit discussions and how India navigated conflicts among member countries to cobble together a consensus on the New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration (NDLD).

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The book begins with a brief history of G20’s inception—from its establishment in 1999 as a response to the Asian financial crisis and bringing together developed and emerging economies to coordinate global economic policies, to eventually becoming a leaders’ level summit.

From the historical context, the book segues into the challenges that came with drafting the NDLD and the arguments and debates involved in resolving them. To Kant’s credit, the transition between these sections is natural and almost inevitable. This seamless movement, free of jargon, also makes the book engaging for a wide audience. Interspersed among the descriptions of diplomatic negotiations are the sherpas’ travel photos, exhibiting the folk culture of different states, and offering a break from the intensity of pre-summit discussions.

Gaps in the Narrative 

But what the book brings in wealth of diplomatic victories and challenges, it falls short in holding readers’ attention with the overuse of catch-all phrases such as “inclusivity”, “sustainability” and “international cooperation”. True, much of this was the agenda of the summit, but repeatedly resorting to them compels readers to skim through the text.

And while Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s contributions in resolving deadlocks often find mention, the absence of details on how these negotiations panned out makes their inclusion redundant. Something similar happens when the author lists the initiatives planned to achieve the summit’s goals but does not offer any details on when and how these will be implemented.

Chapters laced with grand assertions aim to instill a sense of pride. In one such instance, Kant applauds India’s commitment to climate action and calls out developed nations for executing major profit-driven projects at the cost of the environment, the price of which is to be paid by the developing nations. However, such claims are rendered meaningless in the light of reports of deforestation and displacement for development projects.

While the book gives readers a ringside view of the painstaking preparations for the summit, it fails to offer diverse perspectives, presenting India’s side of the story in the broadest strokes.