With India assuming G-20 presidency earlier this month, its G-20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant on Monday made a strong pitch for working together through hope, harmony and healing to deal with the global challenges, with a focus on developing countries and the Global South whose voice is often unheard.
Kickstarting the first meeting of the G-20 Sherpas in Udaipur, Kant also highlighted India's initiatives such as Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and direct benefit transfer that have helped lift a vast population above the poverty line.
Kant said the issue notes on 13 working groups have already been circulated among the participants. The notes address concerns such as accelerated, inclusive and resilient growth; accelerating progress on sustainable development goals, particularly health and education, climate finance, technological transformation and digital public infrastructure. "We will be in the listening mode as you guide us and as we get your perspective," he said.
On Sunday, he had flagged rising global debt, inflation and slowdown in growth, sharp differences over the Ukraine conflict as key challenges facing the world.
Kant stressed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said India's Presidency would like to be inclusive, ambitious, action-oriented and decisive.
"The challenges that we face today can be solved only by working together through hope, harmony and healing and our first concern should be towards those whose need is greatest," he said at the opening session of the deliberations focusing on technological transformation in the digital economy.
Kant said India's G-20 Presidency will seek to advocate the priorities of the developing countries and the Global South in addition to that of the G-20 partners.
"Our perspective is that we should have a win-win collaboration between all of us, developing countries, Global South, and advanced economies. We need to build new approaches, this is a unique form of both the developed world and emerging economies. We need to build approaches to benefit the world on key global issues," he said.
The first session of discussions on Monday focussed on technological transformation in the digital economy, health and education, while the second will be on green development and India's Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) initiative.
There will be three more sessions on Tuesday that will focus on accelerated, inclusive and resilient growth, multilateralism and food, fuel and fertilisers, women-led development, tourism and culture.
India formally assumed the G-20 Presidency on December 1.