India can help build it by placing the orange economy, educational leadership, media exchange and digital cooperation at the centre of its engagement. The objective is not simply to improve how the Global South is seen

The Global South does not suffer from a shortage of stories. It suffers from a shortage of control over how those stories are framed, circulated and remembered. Its countries are home to most of the world’s population, some of its youngest societies, fastest-growing markets, oldest knowledge systems and most inventive responses to scarcity, climate stress, digital exclusion and social inequality. Yet much of the world still encounters the Global South through a narrow lens: conflict, poverty, instability, aid, extraction or delayed development. This is not merely a problem of image. It is a problem of power.

Communication shapes which experiences become universal, which institutions are treated as credible and which countries are seen as sources of ideas rather than recipients of them. For decades, the Global South has participated in an international communication order whose principal platforms, standards, narratives and gatekeepers were located elsewhere. Its societies have been represented, interpreted and often simplified before being heard directly. That order is no longer adequate.

The Global South now needs a communication strategy built around centrality. It must move from reacting to global conversations to setting them. It must stop appearing only as a subject of development and begin speaking as an author of the future. For India, this is both an opportunity and a responsibility.

India’s role cannot be confined to amplifying diplomatic messaging or promoting national achievements. It can help build a wider communication architecture through which the countries of the Global South exchange knowledge, circulate culture, shape policy language and develop direct relationships with one another.

At the heart of this effort should be the orange economy. The orange economy brings together culture, creativity,........

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