Is Prime Minister Inder Gujral superstitious? Without any convincing explanation for his absence at the eighth summit of the Group of Fifteen (G-15) this week in Kuala Lumpur, one can only surmise that Mr Gujral may have been reminded by his astrologers that it was after attending the first, inaugural summit of the G-15 in the very same city, Kuala Lumpur, in the summer of 1990 that the then Indian Prime Minister, Vishw-anath Pratap Singh, returned home to enter the last phase of his tenure in South Block!
V P Singhs 1990 visit to Kuala Lumpur for the launch of the G-15 was a historic one for India for other reasons. Driving around KL then the rapidly prospering capital of a booming Malaysia -- Mr Singh asked an Indian official accompanying him why India had not done as well as Malaysia had managed to do. What is the secret of their success and what can we do to replicate their model? Give me a note, Singh urged his enthusiastic interlocutor. Thus was conceived the note which economists in the government of India even now refer to as the L-paper (L presumably for liberalisation) an agenda for economic liberalisation which formed the basis for the July 1991 policy reform initiated by the then Union finance minister, Manmohan Singh.
V P Singhs companion and the author of the L-paper was an official from the Prime Ministers Office, Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Ahluwalia recalls how Singh was impressed by Malaysia and was keen to learn more about the South-east Asian growth experience. Indian politicians of all hues have looked East since and never looked back. From Singh and Narasimha Rao to Chandrababu Naidu and Karunanidhi and many more across all parties, Look East has become the new mantra.
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It is unlikely, however, that Vice-President, Krishna Kant, will return from his first diplomatic foray, as Indias representative at the G-15 summit, equally enthusiastic about the East Asian miracle. If Mr Kant is less sanguine, then the person responsible for this will also be none other than Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed. This years G-15 summit met in the shadow of the East- and South-east Asian currency crisis and ended up as some sort of group therapy for a nervous and chastened Mahathir.
The currency crisis has robbed Mahathir of his hubris. Even as late as last year, at the Harare summit of the G-15, Mahathir was cocky. His cockiness was on full display at the Singapore ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation where Malaysia, along with other G-15 countries like Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia, dumped India and went ahead to support widening the WTO agenda. The Harare summit had explicitly resolved that issues such as the link between trade and investment and trade and competition should be discussed under the auspices of the Unctad (UN Conference on Trade and Development).
Many G-15 governments agreed to meet in Delhi, shortly after the Harare meeting, to take a united view on the subject. Only Brazil was honest and transparent and said it was not interested in the G-15 consensual view. Others backed India in New Delhi and dumped it in Singapore.
Admittedly, this did not surprise the more informed WTO-watchers, many of whom had advised India against intransigence and had shown the writing on the wall.
While such national differences are bound to exist in all groups, even within the G-7 (or G-8) sharp inter-governmental differences are often expressed, the real problem with G-15 is that after eight years, the group has still not jelled. Unlike the G-7, which had greater policy coherence and internal consistency in its initial years (today even the G-7/8 seems a bit lost and unclear about its role and agenda), the G-15 has never been able to define a clear agenda for itself.
One reason for this failure is the timing of its creation. Having been created as a forum of the South, in the context of the North-South divide and debate, the G-15 was born in the midst of the virtual ending of the East-West conflict, with the end of the Cold War, and flagging South-South co-operation. The waywardness of many G-15 summits over the last few years testifies to this fact.
Perhaps the Kuala Lumpur summit once again marks a turning point for G-15/16. With renewed concerns about globalisation and rapid liberalisation, in the aftermath of the Asian currency crisis, the South consciousness is once again on the ascendance. This was reflected at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM) last month, where the developing countries hijacked the agenda and placed their concerns at centre-stage, as well as at various recent bilateral meetings Prime Minister Gujral has had with African and Asian heads of government.
The G-15 can still regain relevance if developing countries are able to generate shared agendas. However, if the countries of the South pursue individual national agendas when the going is good and seek the support of groups like the G-15 when in trouble, there will always be the sceptics who will regard such forums as a waste of time. G-15 enthusiasts urge the South to learn from the G-7 how to run a club. What they forget is that producers cartels have always functioned more effectively than consumer associations!