"G20 Faces Leadership Void as Putin Shifts Focus to North Korea Summit"

"G20 Faces Leadership Void as Putin Shifts Focus to North Korea Summit" When the leaders of the richest and most powerful countries arrive in Delhi this weekend, they'll ride in bullet-resistant Audi vehicles hired for the equivalent of $3.4 million. Some luxury suites reserved for G20 leaders attending the summit are reportedly going for about $37,000 a night. New Delhi, a city more populous than the entirety of Australia, will effectively shut down for the two-day meeting, with street vendors and shops in the vicinity of the summit venue forced to close. In the lead-up to G20, slums near the meeting hall in Delhi have been demolished, displacing thousands of people — a decision the Indian government maintains has nothing to do with beautifying the city. And around Delhi, giant cutouts have been put up to scare away monkeys that regularly disrupt Delhi's roads, while stray dogs are being cleared from the streets. Narendra Modi's government is going all out to make sure this meeting goes perfectly. The only problem is that two key figures — China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin — will be absent, putting into question the effectiveness of this forum. When the G20 began in 2008 after the global financial crisis tanked economies around the world, these nations came together, agreeing to fix problems both internationally and at home. Fifteen years later, it's struggling to even get a full list of attendees. "At the end of the day, the G20 is a consensus forum, so that means it can't do anything or agree to anything unless every single country agrees to it," said the Australian National University's Adam Triggs, who has researched the effectiveness of the forum.