The Global South is becoming very much relevant at a time when the old world order is vanishing in the face of new challenges and crises in the 21st century, speakers at a national seminar on ‘Global South: Together for a shared future,’ said here on Tuesday.
“If we look at all the developments in the 21st century, we will see that we have ceased to have a global order in which countries can look for their position. What you see today in all these crises, including the pandemic, are countries trying to gain an upper hand in the new global order that could emerge,” former Ambassador T. P. Sreenivasan said, inaugurating the two-day event.
The seminar is being organised jointly by the Institute for the Study of Developing Areas (ISDA) - Centre for International Studies and the Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Central University of Kerala (CUK), at CUK’s Capital Centre here.
Mr. Sreenivasan said that we need to look at the development of G-20 as well as Global South from the perspective of creating a global order in which India has prominence. At the same time, China’s stance and the variety in the Global South is such that it will not be very easy for India to take on the leadership, he noted.
Vice Admiral (Retd) M. P. Muralidharan, who presided, said the economic shift towards the Global South should go hand in hand with enhanced political visibility. The Global South is flexing its political and economic muscles at a time when there is much talk about the coming ‘Asian century’ and a ‘post-Western world,’ he noted.
ISDA chairman Mohanan B. Pillai; Suresh Rangarajan, Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, CUK; ISDA director V. Rajendran Nair, spoke.
