(Following are the excerpts from an Interview with Ram Kishan on Role of civil society at G20. Ram Kishan has been actively involved in this process and is part of the delegation at Cannes, France. He can be reached at ramkishan2000@gmail.com.).

Why do you think that the civil society should engage with issues like G20?
I see a couple of compelling reasons as to why we should get engaged with this process. First, we need to bear in mind that the decisions taken in these forums, be it economic, political or developmental related issues, they have a bearing on the rest of the world. I also feel that we need to sync our developmental efforts with larger political process and dialogues happening across the globe. Further, a major part of the developmental dilemmas that we experience today have been a byproduct of the parochial macro policies espoused and practiced by a few politically powerful nations. Hence, solutions to address such issues cannot be left to themselves alone. There needs to be an effort to tell them emphatically that there is an alternative way to development, which is not merely economical, but a more comprehensive one which takes care of all the dimensions of human existence in its entirety. These are some of the reasons due to which I feel that we need to engage with these forums.

What are the specific reasons due to which the civil society in India should engage with India government?
I have been consistently sharing that we need to be watchful of how India is behaving both externally and internally. To me, there appears to be some contradictions. Domestically, we are faced with unprecedented challenges right from poor governance to poverty. We have not come anywhere close to a practical solution to the fundamental issues in education, food security, water and sanitation, health etc. Millions of our children continue to be anemic and millions are pushed to the dark tunnel of poverty. We fare very poorly on Human Development Index (HDI). Our per capita income is much lower than other G20 countries. Amidst all these mounting problems, India wants to project itself as an emerging superpower slashing billions of rupees in Africa, Bangladesh and a few other countries. We need to understand the rationale behind such gestures. There are many questions that are yet to be answered – what is the process of investing such large amount of money in foreign aid, is there any systemic arrangement to ensure transparency and accountability in this process? Hence, here is a contrast; while we are one of the emerging global leaders, we also have several local issues to address. We have individuals in our country who adds on to the Forbes list every year, but on the other side, many are deprived of their livelihood options. It is due to this dichotomy, I feel that the civil society here in India needs to engage with the government to see how it is going to position itself across these forums.

Can you tell us more about the entire process of civil society engagement here in India?
Since 2009, we have been looking for any initiative that sought to engage with international forums like G20. Subsequently, we got linked with Seoul G20 group. On the eve of G20 meeting in Seoul in the year 2010, the Korean civil society brought together some civil society organizations to have a Civil G20 meeting. Eventually, they succeeded in organizing such a meeting and civil society representatives from across the globe participated in the same sharing their perspectives on development, climate change, poverty etc. However, the response that we received from them was that G20 is not a platform to discuss these issues as its principle mandate is to deal with economic issues. However, subsequent to the meeting we looked at the decisions taken during the meeting. It became evident that they discussed development from a different perspective, they see development can be achieved with growth model, on the contrary India hasn’t been able to do so in last 2 decades. It is not that they do not talk about development, but they look at it from a growth perspective. If you have more growth, you have more jobs, if you have more jobs then, you have more money and it will then percolate to the people and will eventually reduce poverty. However, they never viewed development from the perspective of justice, equity. This is what we wanted to challenge that this model does not work.

You also have been advocating FTT (Financial Transaction Tax) and other progressive tax reformatory initiatives. Can you explain further?
G20 member countries had failed to deliver on the commitments that they made to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Though, they had promised to set apart the 0.7% of their GDP to meet this purpose, many of them retracted from this commitment citing financial deficit due to global recession. There was also an additional commitment from them of 100 billion for the climate finance. However, they failed to come up with additional funds. They agreed to fund climate finance at the cost of slashing the aid budget, but no additional financial resource would be made available. This made us to think of the innovative financing to raise resources like, FTT. It is estimated that if FTT is introduced in G20 countries alone, it will bring an approximate amount of 400 billion. So we feel that FTT is an effective and alternate way of raising resources for meeting the developmental targets.

You also questioned the rationale with which India government going ahead with its foreign aid policy? Some more comments on this?
India is soon going to have its own foreign aid agency through which it is planning to shell out around 11.5 billion in another five years. India has also made a commitment to African Union for 5 billion and it gave a credit line of one billion to Bangladesh. I would say there is nothing wrong in having an effective foreign aid policy. What I would like to emphasize is the need to have an effective systemic process to ensure that such a process is carried out in a legitimate manner. This is the taxpayers’ money that is being slashed in other countries. Therefore, we have the right to know how that money is used. Secondly, I am not convinced of the morale and the legitimacy of India government to go ahead with such a massive foreign aid policy. As I mentioned earlier, the domestic scenario is not at all encouraging. Our country houses 30% of the people living in poverty. Then, why don’t we first take care of this one third of the poverty stricken people? We are not sure if the government is using aid as a strategy to promote its own business or the strategic objectives.

What were the core areas that you focused in your efforts here in India?
The first official meeting of the civil society took place in August 08, 2011 to discuss about our strategy. Before this, the efforts to engage with the government were more sporadic and scattered. This meeting helped us to be more focused and coordinated among ourselves. There was an agreement within the civil society that we need to work on three broader areas; to build our own expertise on the subject and secondly to broad base our efforts and also to increase our engagement with government of India. As part of our knowledge building process, we identified four key areas – food and agriculture, innovative financing, tax, climate finance, health and MDGs. We focused on these areas as felt that we need to be clear with these issues first before we demand a better deal from the larger political institutions. We had invited position papers on these issues and subsequently consolidated them all into a common position paper which was later shared with Ministry of Finance and other relevant institutions. We will also be taking them to Cannes to lobby in the best way possible. As a run up to G20, there was also a public event held on FTT in New Delhi on 29th October.

What challenges do you see in this engagement?
Broadly speaking there are two issues – first how do you see G20 as a global forum as it is group of nations which have come together on a voluntary basis. Second is about its inclusiveness and legitimacy, considering the fact it comprises of only 20 countries? What about the rest of the countries? There is also an overwhelming criticism that it is replacing the democratic set up of UN and some of the issues are best discussed in the UN forum than that of a forum like G20. Whatever may be, G20 is going to stay and it has a considerable wielding power and its decisions have a broader impact on the lives of millions. Therefore we need to engage with them.

How do you comment on the criticism that G20 is a threat to UN?
I see no harm in nations with good interest coming together. There was G8 and G7. Nobody criticized their legitimacy. Since G20 has a mix of everything and it is more powerful, people began to criticize its legitimacy. It should be seen as a means to achieve the larger goals of UN, not as an alternative mechanism to UN. For e.g. if UN says that we need to have 100 billion for financing climate related endeavors, where does the money come from? Here is the role of G20, it has to be forthcoming and saying that it will contribute a specific portion of it. This is why I say that it should be a means to achieve larger UN goals.