It was last year, around the same time, that an article published by Carnegie boldly announced: “The ‘Global South’ is making a linguistic comeback.” Only a few months earlier, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, had declared India’s commitment to “lending” a voice to the Global South at the G20 summit. A month before that, Marape, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, had already hailed Modi as the leader of the Global South, providing a “third voice in the face of the Global North.” To Modi’s credit, he has taken on the responsibility quite successfully, from launching the Global Centre for Excellence for Global South Countries (DAKSHIN) in November 2023 to centralizing the “voice” of the Global South in the G20 and, more recently, in the G7 summit.
Clearly, this is not just a linguistic comeback. The surge in the use of ‘Global South’ has evident political relevance on a global level. It is predicted that by 2030, 3 out of the 4 largest economies will be from the Global South, with India and China leading and Indonesia following close behind the US. In such a drastically evolving world where the Global South is set to hold great power, it is only fitting that we examine its leadership and ponder its future direction.
The term ‘Global South’ was coined in 1969 by American writer Carl Oglesby and was popularized by the Brandt Report in 1980. The report distinguished between countries with higher GDP per capita and poorer ones—most of which lay in the Southern Hemisphere. Thus, in the most general sense, the Global South represents a bloc of poorer countries, often synonymous with ‘developing,’ ‘underdeveloped,’ or ‘Third World’ countries. However, this is an oversimplification of the geopolitical relevance of the term. In fact, during the Cold War itself, the ‘Third World’ had already begun to assert its political stance. During the Bandung Conference in 1955, 29 states, representing half of the world’s population, convened, and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) emerged, later solidified in Belgrade six years later. These participant countries were united by their collective experience of exploitation through colonialism and imperialism, as well as their opposition to the imperial hierarchies embedded in the world system, even in the postcolonial era.
Their stance was clear: abstain from picking sides in the great power rivalries, lest they fall into old patterns of subordination. Yet, as the ‘Second World’ collapsed at the end of the Cold War, the term ‘Third World’ became redundant. Nevertheless, the NAM continued to grow under various, often interchangeable, banners, including that of the Group of 77 (G77) and the Global South. Now encompassing over 130 countries and representing two-thirds of the world’s population, the movement’s ambitions have also grown. Today, the term represents a vast bloc of countries focused on creating a more equitable and just global economic structure and promoting a more multipolar world.
Critics have often pointed out the factual inaccuracies in the geographical categorization of the group, along with the vast diversity in the political, economic, and cultural identities of its member countries. Indeed, some of the most prominent members, such as India and China, lie entirely in the Northern Hemisphere, while New Zealand and Australia, part of the ‘Global North,’ are located in the Southern Hemisphere. You might also side with the critics when you compare members like India, an emerging power, to small island nations such as Fiji. Additionally, rivalries and tensions exist within the group, including the geopolitical contests between India and China. Nevertheless, what the critics fail to recognize is that this very diversity is what keeps the term politically relevant. When one refers to the ‘Global South,’ they are essentially uniting a vastly diverse group of countries around a common objective: empowering historically subordinate nations to challenge the unequal global order.