India, Sept. 23 -- In 2026, the world has changed faster than the institutions built to govern it. Global economic power has moved east and south. The climate crisis, Artificial Intelligence, critical technologies and supply-chain disruptions have created problems that barely existed when the United Nations was established. Developing countries have become larger producers, consumers and sources of capital. Yet at the centre of the multilateral system sits an institutional architecture whose distribution of authority still carries the imprint of 1945.

India's message at the 81st United Nations General Assembly should be understood against this widening gap.

New Delhi is again calling for reform of the UN Security Council (UNSC). But tre...