Mata Amritanandamayi Devi is the New Chair of the G20's Official Engagement Group

By: WE Staff | Wednesday, 26 October 2022

The Indian Government has appointed Mata Amritanandamayi Devi (Amma) as the Chair of the country’s Civil 20 (C20), an official engagement group of the Group of 20 (G20).

According to a release, the G20 is the foremost intergovernmental forum for the developed and developing economies of the world to discuss financial stability on a global scale.

The C20 is its platform for civil-society organisations (CSOs) to bring forth non-government and\snon-business voices to the G20 leaders.

The G20 will be presided over by India from December 1, 2022, to November 30, 2023.

The culmination of the festivities will be the G20 Leaders' Summit, which will be held in New Delhi on September 9–10, 2023, at the level of Heads of State and Government.

However, India will organise more than 200 meetings beforehand, a task that requires a lot of work from ministerial meetings, working groups, and engagement groups.

Amma expressed her gratitude to the Indian Government for setting up such a high-level representation of the voices of the common people upon accepting her position as Chair of India's C20 engagement committee.

In the initial C20 online meeting Amma said "Hunger, conflict, extinction of species, and environmental destruction are the most important issues facing the world today. We should put in sincere effort to develop solutions. If scientists of all fields— computer science, mathematics, physics, engineers, etc—would all work together, then we would be able to create more innovative methods of predicting environmental catastrophes, and thereby we would be able to save so many lives. Often, we see a lack of multidisciplinary and integrated effort. This is the need of the hour.”  

In order for society as a whole to advance, she noted that eradicating poverty in rural areas is crucial, particularly given that it is these communities who provide the majority of our food. Amma has spent more than 35 years researching the daily activities of villagers throughout India and the rest of the world.

She knows from personal experience that when we observe villages from above, we cannot discover comprehensive solutions. We must get down to the people's level and comprehend the problems from their perspective.

Amma said “One of the fundamental causes of conflict is hunger. The issue of hunger is very complex. When we go into impoverished villages, we see that often the addictions of men lead to poverty. This poverty in turn prevents women from getting proper nutrition during the vital stages of pregnancy."

"As a result of malnourishment or even of absorbing toxins from contaminated food, their children die at birth. People need to be made aware of the need for nourishing women, especially pregnant women.”