With just two days to go for the start of the two-day G20 summit in New Delhi on Saturday (Sept 9), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called for a shift away from GDP-led economic growth to human-centric development and said it has been noted with great concern that the progress on Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is off-track.

Articulating his views in an Oped in the Indian media, he said the post-pandemic world order is very different from the world before it and there are three important changes, among others.

India’s G20 Presidency has played the role of a catalyst in these shifts, he says adding this was especially needed in the context of mainstreaming the marginalized aspirations of developing countries, the Global South and Africa.

The Voice of Global South Summit, which witnessed participation from 125 countries in January under India’s Presidency, “was an important exercise to gather inputs and ideas from the Global South, Modi said adding that is why India has also pushed for the inclusion of the African Union as a permanent member of the G20.

Pitching for an “interconnected world” where challenges across domains are interlinked, he said “this is the midway year of the 2030 Agenda and many are noting with great concern that the progress on SDGs is off-track. The G20 2023 Action Plan on Accelerating Progress on SDGs will spearhead the future direction of the G20 towards implementing SDGs.”

The Indian PM said many countries of the Global South are at various stages of development and climate action must be a complementary pursuit and “ambitions for climate action must be matched with actions on climate finance and transfer of technology.”

“We believe there is a need to move away from a purely restrictive attitude of what should not be done, to a more constructive attitude focusing on what can be done to fight climate change,” Modi’s Oped says.