The importance of the Cairo summit is emphasised for its focus on the Asian crisis and the multilateral trading system, especially as the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation follows a week later in Geneva. ThePrime Minister will indeed lose an opportunity to get to know at first hand the minds of G-15 countries on important issues, though the Vice-President and the Commerce Minister will be there. Yet it is well enough known that this country has not recently used to its own advantage its G-15 association. This has been due partly to the changed international situation and partly to its poor grasp of this change. It was precisely because of excessive faith in G-15 solidarity that India stuck out like a sore thumb at the WTO's first ministerial conference in Singapore in 1996. It persuaded itself that promises made by some Asian countries in the G-15 that they would hang together to oppose the developed world's new trade agenda could be depended upon. In the event, India turned out to be the only country which steadfastly opposed the initiation of investment and competition studies in the WTO. Others such as Malaysia struck deals on the side, leaving it alone to wave the G-15 flag and look rather foolish.

TheIndian government's problem with regard to groupings such as the G-15 is not hard to understand. This country has for long been accustomed to being a leading voice in developing-country outfits such as the non-aligned movement, the G-77 and the G-15. A vocal association with them reinforces its delusions of grandeur which might once have had a basis in fact, but no longer. It has found it painful to recognise that South-South solidarity is not what it used to be and that developing countries are more concerned with their individual interests than in ganging up on a villainous rich world. The result has been India's peculiar inclination to forget its national interests to hold aloft the banner of developing-world unity where smaller and less self-righteous countries have been more pragmatic. This is by no means to suggest that India should end its association with the G-15 and similar groupings. But it does need to reorient itself. It needs to acknowledge its own diminished standing in them, and to make arealistic assessment of their diminished capacity to deliver for their members. Absence inspired by domestic compulsions apart, this government should embark on introspection about its strategy to promote India's interests in a changed world.