This year’s G20 summit is being held in India! G20 is an organization of the world’s 20 most important and influential industrialized countries to discuss economic and financial stability globally. Members of G20 account for 85% of the world’s economic output, 75% of world trade, and around 60% of the world’s population. The Group of Twenty – G20’s full name – was founded in 1999 and is taking place in New Delhi, the capital of India. The current chairman of G20 is the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.
The Group of Twenty was not the only large and influential economic group conceived. G20 was actually based off of its predecessor, G7. G7 or the Group of Seven was founded in 1975 and meetings related to G7 are still ongoing. It was briefly changed to G8 for around 15 years, after adding Russia in 1997 with the collapse of the unstable Soviet Union, but was reverted back to G7 due to Russia’s suspension from the group after their annexation of Crimea.
The eighteenth meeting of G20 does not come without controversy, however. Usually, invites issued by India use the name “India” in English and “Bharat” when written in Hindi, one of India’s official languages. The invite to G20 though included “President of Bharat” on it – in English. After the delivery of the invitations, government critics accused Modi’s government and his Hindu BJP party, the largest political party in the world with 180 million people, of planning to change the name of India to Bharat.
This meeting of G20 is taking place from September 9th to the 10th. It is the first to be held in India as well as the whole of Southern Asia. India has cleared many slums ahead of the summit.
