The G-7 invite India to their first summit since the Covid-19 pandemic, seeing India as a very important dialogue partner.
S Jaishankar, the External Affairs Minister of India is on a four-day visit to the United Kingdom (UK). He is there to participate in the G-7 foreign and development ministers’ meeting. This shall mark the first in-person meeting of the foreign ministers of the G-7. It comprises Canada, France, German, Italy, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The G-7 Ministers’ meeting will eventually be followed by a G-7 summit that will be held in June in Scotland.
India along with Australia, South Africa, South Korea, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ chairs were requested to attend the meeting as guests.
In addition to being part of the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting, the Indian minister will also take part in several bilateral talks. This could include bonding with the UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, also with the US State Secretary Antony Blinken.
Previously, India has been invited as a guest country to the 2019 summit, which was held in France and attended by Modi. The importance of India on the global scene emerges from the fact that this grouping of rich nations sees India as a valuable dialogue partner.
This G-7 summit will focus on issues like the Covid-19 pandemic and climatic change. Therefore, the foreign ministers’ meeting will be geared towards preparing for the actual summit in June itself.
There is a lot of importance also to the bilateral aspect of the meeting. Once the G-7 meeting gets over the bilateral talks will start. This coincides with the fact that Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Boris Johnson are also to have a virtual summit. The British government has promised a lot of assistance to India and has already sent more than 1000 ventilators to Indian hospitals. It will be sending 200 ventilators and lots of oxygen concentrates and other such helpful items as part of its overall assistance package.
Democracy is the key element that binds the G-7 together, making them a club of rich industrialized democracies. The fact that India, South Korea, South Africa, and Australia are invited indicates that June summit June will have heads of all these countries. The G-7 shall come together with the common aim of tackling China, Russia, and Iran. While India does not have any animosity with Russia and Iran, it does have a problem with China. Therefore, the choice of countries by the G-7 shows that the western countries plus Japan is increasingly looking towards the Indo-Pacific. What this indicates is that these countries of the western world are looking at Indo-Pacific as central. G-7 along with these countries make the D-10 club of leading world democracies.