<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">On any given day, strolling down an Indian street, you will encounter billboards featuring Bollywood stars endorsing various products.</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But over the past year, posters for the G20 summit have cropped up in every corner of the country. They are taped to electricity poles and stuck behind tuk-tuks, and have been showcased on massive LED screens.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The posters prominently display India's official G20 logo, featuring a globe nestled within a blossoming lotus - a design that has drawn comparisons with the symbol of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Accompanying them are photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The message that the government wants to send is that India has arrived on the world stage.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With a reported budget for hosting the G20 exceeding $100m (£78m), the country has held 200 pre-summit meetings in more than 50 cities featuring yoga, cultural performances and specially curated menus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For months, there's been dizzying coverage of events on Indian news channels, aimed at tempting even those usually impervious to the nuances of foreign policy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now, with the main summit just two days away, the capital Delhi has been spruced up for what is being called the most high-profile event to be held in India in years.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sculpted fountains, flower pots and the Indian flag have been installed around the city. Dozens of historical monuments have been lit up with the summit logo and people are flocking to click selfies. The city's famed gardens have received a facelift, their foliage freshly pruned, and flags of participating nations put up.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But there is another side to the beautification drive. Temporary cloth walls have been erected in front of many slums to hide them from view and, in some cases, residents have been relocated. Beggars have been evicted from the heart of the city - it's not clear where they have been moved to.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The government has declared three days of holiday for most schools and offices, shut crucial roads and deployed thousands of security personnel ahead of the event. Hundreds of flights and trains have been cancelled.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">India has never hosted so many world leaders at the same time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"India is trying to blur the line between foreign affairs and domestic politics, and the G20 is the most important forum to achieve that. The government realises that," says Jitendra Nath Misra, a former Indian ambassador.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But even with the carnival-like atmosphere, Delhi will have the delicate task of ensuring that issues like the Ukraine war - which caused deep divisions within the group at last year's G20 summit in Bali - do not derail its ambitions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"India will hope the focus will be on agreeable issues rather than divisive ones like Ukraine. It hasn't able to do that so far but it will want to look better now," Mr Misra says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since assuming the G20 presidency, India has said it wants to put issues that disproportionately affect developing countries - climate change, the increasing debt burden on developing nations, digital transformation, rising inflation, and food and energy security - on the agenda.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The summit comes at a time when the "Global South" has managed to assert itself as a major stakeholder in the international order and Western countries have realised that "their exclusive clubs cannot alone solve the problems of the world", says Happymon Jacob, a professor of foreign policy at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With growing inequality, high food and fuel prices, and climate change, many countries now question the relevance of a forum dominated by the West like the G20, which they claim is focused on an outdated global distribution of power. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>