Modi's Balancing Act at G20 Johannesburg: Two Tracks, One Strategy

1. Introduction – India's Multi-Vector Moment

Between November 22 and 23, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi executed one of India's most intricate diplomatic performances at the G20 Johannesburg summit. Across two days of densely packed bilateral and trilateral meetings, Modi engaged leaders from Japan to Brazil, Canada to South Africa, Italy to Malaysia. But beneath the ceremonial handshakes and joint communiqués lay a calculated strategic architecture: India was simultaneously deepening ties with democratic technology allies while consolidating its leadership position among Global South nations. This wasn't diplomatic hedging—it was institutional multi-alignment at scale. Modi's Johannesburg agenda revealed a two-track strategy designed to maximize India's optionality in an increasingly fractured global order.

2. Track A – Allied Engagements

The first track materialized through Modi's engagements with established democracies and Indo-Pacific partners. His meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Taka focused on deepening technology, infrastructure, and defence partnerships, with Japan positioned as a trusted Indo-Pacific partner. Notably, the conversation avoided any adversarial framing, emphasizing collaboration over confrontation.

The Italy meeting with Giorgia Meloni centered on EU-India technology cooperation, trade flows, and Indo-Pacific coordination—signaling India's intention to serve as Europe's strategic bridge into the Asia-Pacific theater. With France, Germany, and the UK, discussions similarly revolved around emerging technologies, health security, and what Modi's team consistently termed "deepening strategic partnerships."

But the signature achievement of Track A was the launch of the Australia-Canada-India Technology & Innovation (ACITI) Partnership. This new trilateral format, unveiled during separate meetings with Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada and Anthony Albanese of Australia, represents India's most explicit institutional bet on democratic technology corridors. The language surrounding ACITI was deliberate and loaded: "trust," "strategic tech flows," "open societies," "rules-based," "transparent ecosystems," and "resilient frameworks."

This vocabulary—open, rules-based, transparent—functions as allied-coded messaging. It signals alignment with Western democratic norms around digital governance, supply chain security, and technology standards without explicitly naming adversaries. The ACITI framework creates a trusted trilateral that can coordinate on semiconductor supply chains, AI governance, quantum computing standards, and critical technology transfers outside of Chinese-dominated ecosystems.

Singapore and South Korea rounded out Track A with discussions on technology partnerships and regional stability. The common thread: India positioning itself as the democratic world's partner of choice for technology collaboration, infrastructure investment, and Indo-Pacific coordination.

3. Track B – Global South & Challenger-Space Engagements

While Track A built trusted technology corridors with democratic allies, Track B operated on entirely different terrain. Modi's meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa—the summit host and G20 presidency holder—emphasized India-South Africa advancement in trade, culture, investment, technology, skilling, AI, and critical minerals. The language shifted dramatically: "partnership," "solidarity," "South-South alignment."

This vocabulary signals a different diplomatic grammar—one rooted in postcolonial solidarity, emerging economy cooperation, and what might be called challenger-space engagement. The IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) trilateral meeting on November 22 formalized this positioning. The three powers reaffirmed shared values of pluralism, democracy, multiculturalism, and inclusion, while pushing for UN reform, strengthened multilateralism, and a fairer world order. The subtext was clear: Global South institutional coordination designed to amplify emerging economy voices in global governance structures.

Modi's meetings with Brazil, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Angola followed similar patterns. Discussions centered on critical minerals access, health security, counter-terrorism cooperation, and what was repeatedly framed as "Global South priorities." Ethiopia and Angola represent access to African critical minerals. Malaysia and Vietnam offer ASEAN connectivity and hedging options against both Chinese and Western dominance. Brazil provides Latin American institutional weight and commodity coordination.

Critically, across all Track B engagements, Modi's team maintained strategic ambiguity. There was no anti-adversary rhetoric, no explicit China/USA criticism, no bloc confrontation. Instead, the focus remained on inclusive growth, solidarity, and multilateral reform. This wasn't evasion—it was deliberate positioning that preserves India's room to maneuver with non-aligned nations and maintains optionality in relationships with powers outside the Western alliance system.

4. The Balancing Logic

Why does India need to run both tracks simultaneously? The answer lies in five interlocking strategic imperatives that define India's position in the global system.

Supply Chain Diversification: India cannot afford dependence on any single bloc for critical inputs. Track A provides access to advanced semiconductors, AI chips, and high-end manufacturing technology from Japan, Australia, Canada, and Europe. Track B secures access to critical minerals—lithium, cobalt, rare earths—from South Africa, Brazil, Angola, and Ethiopia. Running both tracks simultaneously builds supply chain resilience.

Technology Sovereignty: The ACITI partnership offers India entry into trusted technology ecosystems that can counterbalance Chinese dominance in 5G, AI training infrastructure, and digital platforms. But India also needs to avoid total dependence on Western technology architectures. Track B engagements with Malaysia, Vietnam, and Brazil create alternative partnership options and prevent India from becoming a junior partner in Western-led tech blocs.

Critical Minerals Access: The energy transition and digital economy both depend on critical minerals that India largely doesn't possess domestically. Track A partnerships provide financing and processing technology for minerals. Track B partnerships provide access to the minerals themselves. South Africa, Angola, and Brazil hold deposits India desperately needs. This isn't ideological—it's geological reality.

Avoiding Bloc Entrapment: The US-China rivalry is forcing nations to choose sides. India's two-track strategy is designed to resist this binary. By deepening democratic partnerships (Track A) while simultaneously leading Global South coordination (Track B), India maintains strategic autonomy. It can cooperate with the Quad on Indo-Pacific security while refusing to join anti-China alliances. It can launch ACITI while strengthening IBSA. This isn't contradiction—it's calculated optionality.

Global South Leadership: India's ambitions extend beyond regional power status. Modi is positioning India as the natural leader of the Global South—the world's largest democracy that can speak for emerging economies in ways China cannot (authoritarian) and the West will not (legacy of colonialism). The IBSA trilateral, the emphasis on UN reform, the push for fairer multilateral mechanisms—these signal India's bid to institutionalize its Global South leadership role. But this leadership position only works if India maintains credibility with non-Western nations, which requires the careful language and strategic ambiguity of Track B.

Modi's six proposed G20 initiatives—global healthcare, disaster resilience, addressing the drug-terror nexus, AI governance, critical minerals coordination, and multilateral development mechanisms—span both tracks. They position India as a solutions provider for democratic allies and Global South partners alike.

5. Implications for India's Strategic Future

The Johannesburg template has profound implications across multiple domains.

Markets and business should recognize that India is building parallel economic architectures. ACITI creates trusted technology supply chains that de-risk investment for companies navigating US-China bifurcation. Simultaneously, India's Global South positioning opens African, Latin American, and Southeast Asian markets where Indian firms can compete without facing the geopolitical baggage Western companies carry.

Foreign policy posture is shifting from non-alignment to multi-alignment. Cold War non-alignment meant staying equidistant from both superpowers. Today's multi-alignment means engaging deeply with multiple blocs simultaneously while maintaining independence from any single one. This is higher-risk, higher-reward positioning that requires extraordinary diplomatic skill.

Technology ecosystems are fragmenting along geopolitical lines. ACITI represents India's bet that democratic technology corridors—not Chinese platforms, not purely Western systems—will define the next phase of digital infrastructure. If successful, India becomes the bridge node between Western innovation and Global South implementation at scale.

Indo-Pacific stability increasingly depends on whether India can maintain its dual-track approach. If India tilts too far toward Western alliances, it loses credibility with ASEAN and African partners. If it tilts too far toward non-alignment, it loses access to critical technologies and security partnerships. The balance Modi struck in Johannesburg—deep cooperation with no formal alliances—may be the template for sustained stability.

UN reform and emerging institutions remain central to India's long-term strategy. The IBSA emphasis on Security Council reform and fairer multilateral mechanisms isn't rhetorical—it's institutional positioning for a world where emerging economies demand governance structures that reflect 21st-century power distribution rather than 1945 configurations.

6. Five Sharp Takeaways

• India is institutionalizing multi-alignment through permanent structures (ACITI, IBSA) rather than ad-hoc diplomatic balancing—this is infrastructure for strategic autonomy, not just clever positioning.

• Trilateral formats matter more than bilateral relationships in the new geopolitical geometry—they create mini-institutions that can coordinate policy without requiring full alliance commitments.

• Technology corridors are the new currency of diplomacy—semiconductors, AI governance, and digital supply chains now drive partnerships that defense pacts once did.

• Global South coalitions have moved from rhetorical solidarity to structured coordination—the IBSA mechanism and Modi's six G20 initiatives represent institutional weight, not just developing-country grievance.

• Strategic ambiguity is a feature, not a bug—India's refusal to name adversaries or join formal blocs isn't weakness or indecision; it's the deliberate preservation of optionality in a multipolar system.

7. Conclusion

At Johannesburg, Modi didn't pick sides—he built options. In a world demanding binary choices, India is engineering a third path: deep enough with democratic allies to access critical technologies, credible enough with the Global South to lead non-Western institutional reform, and strategically ambiguous enough to preserve room for maneuver with all parties. Whether this high-wire act proves sustainable will define India's trajectory—and reshape the geometry of global power—for the decade ahead.