by Modi attends Evian as non-member guest; meets UK, EU and German leaders; raises question of whether the G7 still reflects global economic weight
EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France
Prime Minister Modi attended the G7 summit in Evian as an invited guest rather than a member, holding bilateral meetings with the UK Prime Minister, the European Council President, the European Commission President, and the German Chancellor — a roster of meetings that would, if India were a G7 member, be standard summit business, and that as an invited guest requires specific invitation, scheduling coordination, and the implicit reminder that India’s presence at the table is at the current members’ discretion rather than by established right.
India’s economy, by purchasing power parity, is the third-largest in the world. By nominal GDP at market exchange rates, it is fifth, having surpassed the UK in 2022 and approaching Germany. The G7 — comprising the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and Canada — includes countries with smaller economies than India’s and excludes a country with a larger economy, which CSIS analysts noted is a governance configuration that “the G7’s agenda has globalized even as the bloc’s share of the world economy and population has shrunk.”
The Modi Bilateral Schedule: Progress on Multiple Fronts
The UK bilateral produced joint celebration of the newly concluded trade agreement, with both leaders confirming that UK businesses would invest in India across defense and AI sectors, and that Indian professionals would benefit from improved UK mobility arrangements. The Germany bilateral covered investment, technology cooperation, and the state of bilateral automotive and manufacturing relationships between two countries whose industrial sectors have significant interdependencies. The EU bilateral addressed the still-pending India-EU trade deal, with von der Leyen and Modi expressing confidence in near-term conclusion that both have been expressing with varying degrees of conviction since 2019.
All bilateral meetings included reference to the Iran war ceasefire, the Strait of Hormuz situation, and the importance of freedom of navigation — a topic that India cares about intensely as one of the world’s largest oil importers whose supply chains transit the strait. India’s position on the Iran war has been its characteristic “strategic autonomy” posture: maintaining relations with both the US-led coalition and Iran, supporting diplomatic resolution, avoiding alignment that would constrain future economic options, and expressing support for global energy market stability in terms that everyone can agree with regardless of their specific position on the underlying conflict.
The G7 Membership Question: Who Gets to Ask It
The question of whether India should be a G7 member is raised periodically by Indian officials, analysts, and the occasional G7 member who argues that the bloc’s credibility as a global economic coordination forum requires including economies of India’s scale. The countervailing argument — that the G7 is a club of liberal democracies with aligned values, not merely large economies — runs into the complications that India’s democratic backsliding under Modi, its press freedom rankings, and its relationship with Russia create for the “liberal democracy” criterion. The G7 includes Japan and Italy, both of which have specific institutional challenges, but both of which are unambiguously in the Western geopolitical alignment in ways that India, with its “strategic autonomy” doctrine, is deliberately not.
India’s preferred alternative to G7 membership is its own grouping: the G20, which India hosted in 2023 and which includes both developed and developing economies, giving New Delhi convening authority over a more inclusive global economic governance forum. The G20’s inclusivity makes it less effective as a coordination mechanism — the interests of thirty countries are harder to align than the interests of seven — but gives India a seat that reflects its actual economic weight rather than its alignment with any specific geopolitical bloc.
The G7 presidency rotates annually, with Canada holding it in 2025 and France in 2026. India has observer status at most summits and is regularly invited as a guest, which is the diplomatic arrangement that allows the G7 to benefit from India’s participation and engage Modi directly without committing to the membership question that his country’s democratic trajectory and geopolitical positioning make complicated. Modi has attended. He has held bilateral meetings. He has advocated for India’s positions on energy, trade, and global governance. He has not been offered membership. He will return next year.
India’s G20 Alternative and Its Limitations
India’s preferred global economic governance forum — the G20, which India hosted in New Delhi in 2023 — includes both the G7 members and the large emerging economies (China, India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Indonesia, among others) whose exclusion makes the G7 a shrinking share of global economic activity. India’s G20 presidency in 2023 was a significant diplomatic achievement, producing the New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration and positioning Modi as a global statesman bridging the Western and Global South blocs. The limitation of the G20 as an alternative to G7 membership is exactly its inclusivity: a forum that includes both Russia and the United States, both China and Japan, both Saudi Arabia and France, cannot produce the kind of aligned, enforceable commitments on democratic values, sanctions regimes, and security cooperation that the G7’s value-aligned membership makes possible. India’s hedging between blocs gives it convening authority but limits its ability to anchor itself in the security arrangements that G7 membership would imply. The choice is not between the G7 and the G20 — India participates in both — but between the membership status that comes with alignment and the autonomy that comes with strategic independence.
More at The Daily Mash | Private Eye
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
