India’s G20 Presidency: Rethinking Global Governance and Cooperation
Date: 5th October 2021 (Tuesday)
Time: 4 PM IST | 12:20 PM SAST/CET
Session Format: Panel Discussion
The G20 grouping is a seminal instrument for ensuring economic cooperation in the current stage of capitalism. Having taken a more diverse and inclusive approach than the G8 grouping, the club is democratic (atleast) at the face of it and has tremendous power to influence policies at the national level and decisions taken by the national governments. These groups become testing and pitching groups for what decisions would be lobbied for in the World Bank and IMF. Touted by many as the new colonial frame, the G20 convening is a ground for negotiations that keep up the larger neo-liberal order in place. However, the summits following the on-set of the pandemic hold much more than just diplomatic relevance for what is to become of such high-profile processes especially in relation to the changing dynamics of global capitalism.
As India will host the summit of the high-profile G20 grouping in 2023, it is imminent that the civil society organizations and those concerned with civic action also understand the implications of decisions taken in such meetings. This panel cum workshop is an attempt by the Centre for Financial Accountability to understand the G20 clubs history and evolution over the years and also decipher what the 2023 presidency holds for India and what are impending issues as the countries all over the world try to recover from the pandemic.
Speakers:
1. Patrick Bond
Patrick Bond is a professor at the University of Johannesburg Department of Sociology. His doctorate was from the Johns Hopkins University Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering following studies at the Wharton School of Finance and Swarthmore College (economics). His publications covering global geopolitics include Elite Transition, Against Global Apartheid, Talk Left Walk Right, Politics of Climate Justice and BRICS: An anti-capitalist critique. He works closely with anti-privatisation movements in South African and African environment, labour, social and community movements.
2. Stephano Prato
Stefano Prato is the Managing Director of the Society for International Development (SID) and the Editor of SID’s Quarterly Journal “Development”. He is the coordinator of the Civil Society Financing for Development Group and member of the Editing Team of the annual Spotlight Report on Sustainable Development. He is also currently serving as the C20 Finance Sous-Sherpa in the context of the Italian Presidency of the G20 in 2021. He served as one of the Advisors to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Personalities for the Post-2015 Development Agenda. He is also the co-coordinator of the global Civil Society Nutrition Group and served as member of the Editorial Board of the Right to Food Watch. He is a very active participant of the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) of the Committee on World Food Security and co-facilitates the CSM Working Groups on Food Systems & Nutrition, Agroecology, Sustainable Agriculture & Livestock, and SDGs.
3. Shalmali Guttal
Shalmali Guttal is the Executive Director of Focus on the Global South and Expert Panel member on The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food)For over twenty-five years, her research and writing has concerned economic and social development in Asia, especially the Mekong region and India. The central themes of her work are community resources rights, women’s rights, food sovereignty, agrarian reform, and democratization of governance. She works in solidarity with progressive grassroots movements, unions and activists on the creation and governance of natural, social, and knowledge commons.
4. Biswajeet Dhar
Dr. Biswajit Dhar is a professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Prior to this he was the Director General of Research and Information System for Developing Countries in New Delhi, for five years and Professor and Head of the Centre for WTO Studies in the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi. He has been involved in trade policy issues, particularly in the context of the multilateral trading system, both as a researcher and a policy adviser to the Government of India. He has been a member of the Indian delegation to the Ministerial Conferences of the World Trade Organization. He has also served on expert panels set up by the Ministry of Statistics, Department of Chemicals and Fertilizers and Ministry of Environment and Forests. Dr. Dhar has been working extensively with a number of intergovernmental organizations including UNDP, UNESCAP, FAO, and UNCTAD, taking up issues related to the functioning of the global trading system. He authored and co-authored numerous texts on various issues related to trade and development.
Moderator – Anuradha Munshi, Research Coordinator, Centre for Financial Accountability
Hindi translation will be available/ हिंदी अनुवाद भी उपलब्ध रहेगा
Zoom Meeting Link:
https://zoom.us/j/93270778816?pwd=UDFiclkzQmVtcnRoNVZRd2NJOHFUZz09
Meeting ID: 932 7077 8816
Passcode: 380958