-Ravi Prakash
India is hosting the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12 and 13, bringing together an 11-nation grouping that now looks vastly different from the bloc the world first came to know decades ago. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian are among the leaders arriving in the capital, alongside senior representatives from the rest of the expanded grouping — a lineup that underscores how far BRICS has grown beyond its original five members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
A Bloc Transformed
BRICS today bears little resemblance to the grouping of a few years ago. With the addition of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, the bloc’s 11 members now account for close to half the world’s population, nearly 40 percent of global GDP on a purchasing-power-parity basis, and roughly 26 percent of world trade, according to figures cited in the Financial Times, which has highlighted just how significant an economic force BRICS has become.
Against that backdrop, the presence of Putin, Xi, Pezeshkian and Prime Minister Narendra Modi together in Delhi is being read as more than diplomatic optics. Analysts say it places India at the centre of a much larger experiment unfolding within a shifting global order — even as fundamental questions about the bloc’s identity remain unresolved: Is BRICS primarily an economic platform, a political one, a voice for the Global South, a strategic counterweight to the West, or an institution steadily accumulating power of its own?
Why BRICS Matters to India
Officials and analysts note that India’s approach to BRICS diverges sharply from common assumptions about the bloc. The first point of clarification, they say, is that BRICS is not NATO. It has no military structure, no European Union-style integration, no joint foreign policy and, unlike most major international bodies, no permanent secretariat.
The grouping originated as an economic concept. Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the term “BRIC” in 2001, forecasting that the four emerging economies would come to play an outsized role in the global economy. South Africa joined later. Over time, however, BRICS evolved from an economic acronym into a political platform as well, built on the argument that the institutions governing the world — the IMF, the World Bank, the UN Security Council — still largely reflect an outdated balance of power even as the global economy, and the weight of the Global South within it, has shifted substantially.
Financial Times analysis notes that BRICS now commands considerable economic weight and harbours ambitions to expand its influence over the global system — but that sharp internal divisions persist. Whether an enlarged BRICS can remain cohesive, analysts say, is now the central question facing the bloc.
New Delhi Rejects an “Anti-Western” Framing
A common shorthand casts BRICS as a middle ground between the United States on one side and China and Russia on the other. India, however, rejects that framing. New Delhi’s position, officials and analysts say, is that BRICS can be non-Western without being anti-Western — a distinction Indian policymakers consider critical.
India maintains a strategic partnership with the United States, substantial economic ties with Europe, membership in the Quad, and deepening engagement with the G7, alongside close links to Western markets and technology. At the same time, it sits in BRICS alongside China, Russia and Iran. The explanation, analysts say, lies in the doctrine now underpinning Indian foreign policy: strategic autonomy — the principle that India need not commit to a single camp, and can cooperate with different countries on different issues based on its own interests.
The Indian Express, in its analysis of India’s presidency, has suggested that India has an opportunity to position BRICS as a platform for practical cooperation rather than confrontation with the West. The message, in effect, is that New Delhi is not choosing between Washington and Beijing but maintaining relationships with both.
The Value of an Additional Platform
India’s interest in BRICS, analysts argue, stems partly from the additional diplomatic channel it provides. Among the world’s major forums — the G7, G20, the United Nations, the Quad, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and now an expanded BRICS — each offers a different set of countries, priorities and opportunities. BRICS gives India direct access to key Global South and non-Western economies at a moment when the global order is becoming increasingly fragmented, a dynamic the Financial Times describes as central to BRICS’s growing relevance to a more multipolar world.
But New Delhi is not content with simple membership; it wants to shape the bloc’s direction, which is why its 2026 BRICS presidency carries particular weight.
India’s Presidency: “Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”
India has framed its presidency around the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability” — language notably free of confrontation, anti-American rhetoric or any suggestion of a new military alliance. Its stated priorities include food security, energy security, health, agriculture, supply chains, trade, investment, technology and digital cooperation.
The underlying logic, officials suggest, is to make BRICS functionally useful rather than a forum for political rhetoric. If trade becomes easier, payments simpler, supply chains stronger, technological cooperation deeper and development financing more accessible, the bloc’s value rises correspondingly.
Digital Payments Over a Common Currency
Among the most closely watched questions surrounding BRICS is whether the bloc will move toward a common currency or a direct challenge to the US dollar. India’s position, however, is notably pragmatic. According to a report in The Print, New Delhi is focused on boosting bilateral trade payments through central-bank-backed digital currencies rather than pursuing a single BRICS-wide payment network intended to rival the dollar. The emphasis is on enabling countries to trade in their own currencies through technological tools.
The Financial Times has similarly reported that “de-dollarization” is not a formal agenda item at the summit, with far greater emphasis placed on practical digital-payment connectivity. India’s message, analysts say, is not that the dollar should be dismantled but that more alternatives should be created — a materially different proposition, given the dollar’s continued dominance in global trade, financial reserves and India’s own substantial trade and investment ties with the United States and Europe. Declaring open confrontation with the dollar, analysts note, would run counter to India’s own economic interests. Instead, New Delhi’s approach centres on local-currency trade, digital payment connectivity, and strengthening BRICS financial institutions alongside central bank digital currencies — a gradual, incremental process consistent with India’s broader foreign policy approach.
Beyond Rhetoric: The New Development Bank
Critics have long argued that BRICS amounts to little more than an annual gathering of leaders delivering speeches. That characterisation, however, understates the bloc’s institutional record. BRICS established the New Development Bank, which finances infrastructure and development projects, with India among its principal beneficiaries. The bank is not positioned to replace the World Bank or the IMF in the near term, but it does constitute an additional financing option — a concept analysts describe as central to the bloc’s appeal: more markets, more payment mechanisms, more investment resources, more development funding and more diplomatic partnerships.
The Consensus Problem
The bloc’s expansion, however, has introduced a significant complication: as BRICS grows more representative, reaching consensus becomes correspondingly harder — and this is not a hypothetical concern. Whether 11 countries can agree on a single statement may prove the most immediate test of India’s presidency, given that BRICS leaders’ declarations traditionally require consensus among all member states.
Divisions over West Asia illustrate the difficulty. Iran and the UAE are both BRICS members, and Saudi Arabia is part of the expanded grouping, yet their interests and positions on the ongoing regional conflict diverge considerably. Those differences have already affected BRICS proceedings: when India hosted the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting in May, participants could not agree on a joint statement, and New Delhi ultimately issued only a chair’s statement alongside an outcome document.
The stakes are higher at the leaders’ level. The Print has reported that BRICS negotiators — known as “sherpas” — are searching for “landing zones,” or language acceptable to all 11 countries, with disagreements over West Asia the chief obstacle. Rather than directly naming or condemning any single country, the effort is understood to focus on broader principles: the UN Charter, territorial integrity, protection of civilians, maritime trade, and non-provoked aggression — language calibrated to avoid triggering objections from any individual member, given that overly strong wording risks rejection from one side and overly weak wording risks rejection from another.
The challenge, then, is substantial: securing agreement among 11 countries — some divided by active conflict — on a single joint statement. Success would represent a meaningful diplomatic achievement for India; failure would expose a structural weakness at the heart of the expanded bloc. The declaration due at the summit’s conclusion, informally referred to as the New Delhi Declaration, is accordingly being viewed as a test of whether BRICS can function as a coherent body rather than merely a symbolic gathering.
This is not a new problem. The Print has noted that previous BRICS ministerial meetings encountered similar difficulties: the 2024 expanded BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting saw disagreement over language concerning South Africa’s position on permanent UN Security Council representation, and the April 2025 foreign ministers’ meeting likewise failed to reach consensus on a joint statement. The recurrence of the problem in 2026 — this time driven by West Asia — suggests the underlying question is no longer whether BRICS will keep expanding, since that has already occurred, but whether the bloc can actually act in concert.
The China Question
A further complication looms over the summit: as BRICS grows stronger, China’s influence within it grows correspondingly, given that Beijing is the bloc’s largest economy with extensive trade ties across the membership and a clear vision for how BRICS should evolve. Financial Times analysis frames this as a fundamental unresolved question — whether China remains simply one member among 11, or is becoming the bloc’s de facto leader.
This is the crux of India’s strategic dilemma. New Delhi wants a strong BRICS but not one dominated by China; a louder Global South voice but not an anti-Western bloc; alternative financial mechanisms but not direct confrontation with the dollar; and continued expansion even as that expansion complicates consensus. According to Chatham House analysis, India’s objective is a non-Western BRICS that is explicitly not anti-Western — one that advances Global South interests while preserving India’s relationships with Western powers, including the United States and Europe.
That balancing act is thrown into sharper relief by the sidelines of this summit, where Xi Jinping’s visit to India includes preparations, confirmed by China’s foreign ministry, for a meeting between Modi and Xi. The encounter marks another chapter in the gradual normalisation of India-China relations, notwithstanding continuing friction over the border dispute, trade imbalances, and strategic competition across Asia, alongside India’s ties with Washington and China’s own network of strategic partnerships. Both countries, analysts note, retain substantial economic interests in each other, and BRICS offers a venue in which cooperation can proceed alongside competition — without either side needing to characterise the relationship as friendship. That dynamic is described as characteristic of contemporary geopolitics: cooperating where interests align, competing where they clash, and maintaining dialogue throughout.
A Bloc of Growing Diversity
Perhaps the central lesson of this summit, analysts suggest, is how diverse BRICS has become. Even with five original members, consensus was not straightforward; with 11 members now spanning different political systems, economic interests, foreign policies, and divergent views on the United States, China, and various conflicts, the question of whether such a disparate group can act collectively remains open and increasingly pressing.
An Economic Network, Not Just a Summit
Beyond geopolitics, BRICS represents a substantial economic relationship for India. New Delhi imports large volumes of oil from Russia and electronics, chemicals and machinery from China; the UAE and Saudi Arabia are central to India’s energy, trade and investment ties; Brazil is a key partner in agriculture and commodities; and South Africa matters for minerals and trade. In the other direction, India exports pharmaceuticals, engineering goods, textiles, food products, automobiles and technology to BRICS markets. Indian Express analysis has similarly highlighted the importance of India’s BRICS trade relationships across energy, commodities, manufacturing and exports — underscoring that the bloc functions, for India, as a genuine economic network and not merely a diplomatic gathering.
On the currency question, India’s position remains unambiguous: it is not promoting a common BRICS currency. According to a report in The Economic Times, New Delhi is focused on practical mechanisms — cross-border payments through central bank digital currencies — rather than a shared currency. What India wants, according to that reporting, is a broader menu of options: local currencies, digital currencies, cross-border payment connectivity, reduced transaction costs and reduced foreign-exchange exposure — a realistic posture given the dollar’s continued centrality to global trade, the international financial system and reserve holdings, and given India’s own extensive trade and investment ties with the US and Europe.
On institutional delivery, the New Development Bank offers a concrete data point. According to Moneycontrol, the bank has approved 35 projects in India worth approximately $10.5 billion, and is preparing an Indian rupee bond programme — evidence, supporters argue, that BRICS has moved beyond rhetoric into financing and project delivery, even if it is not poised to supplant the World Bank or IMF.
What Success Looks Like — and Its Limits
Officials and analysts caution against measuring the summit’s significance by attendance, handshakes or photographs. What matters, they argue, is what the 11 countries actually agree to.
For India, the calculus is less about acquiring a new international identity — New Delhi already has one — than about securing strategic space: room to sustain its relationship with Washington, expand trade with Europe, continue its energy relationship with Moscow, compete with Beijing while still cooperating with it, deepen economic partnerships with Gulf states, and demonstrate leadership within the Global South. That is the practical meaning of strategic autonomy — avoiding confinement to any single camp.
At the same time, analysts warn against overstating BRICS’s significance on the basis of scale alone, since size does not equate to power. Eleven countries representing roughly half the world’s population may still struggle to agree on a single paragraph of text. A bloc accounting for nearly 40 percent of global GDP may still find it difficult to build a common financial mechanism. Talk of a multipolar world sits uneasily alongside the reality that one member, China, is a far larger economic power than the rest combined. And references to a unified Global South voice obscure the fact that Global South countries do not share a single foreign policy.
The Balancing Act
For India, then, hosting BRICS yields diplomatic visibility, a substantial platform within the Global South, direct engagement with China, Russia, Iran and Gulf states at a single table, access to new markets, investment opportunities, development financing, alternative payment mechanisms and room for strategic manoeuvre. None of that materialises automatically, however; India will need to convert summit proceedings into concrete outcomes — turning declarations into action, projects into investment, and discussions into agreements.
As leaders including Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Masoud Pezeshkian and Narendra Modi, alongside representatives from Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, gather at a single table in Delhi, the image itself — however striking — is not the measure of success. Power, analysts note, derives from agreement, from the capacity to cooperate, and from the delivery of results. The relevant question emerging from the summit is not who shook hands with whom, but precisely what the 11 countries agreed to.
BRICS, by most assessments, does not constitute a new world order — not yet. It is not replacing the United States, the dollar, NATO, or a fully integrated bloc on the model of the European Union. But dismissing it outright would also be a mistake, analysts argue, since it reflects a genuine underlying trend: a Global South seeking greater influence, emerging economies wanting a larger say in decision-making, countries wanting more options, and a growing reluctance to depend entirely on a single power. That trend represents a substantial opportunity for India — alongside an exceptionally delicate balancing act.
India’s principal BRICS challenge, in this reading, is not China, not the United States, not Iran — it is balance itself: leading a grouping of 11 countries with sharply divergent interests while ensuring no single member comes to dominate it.
BRICS arriving in India is the headline. What India manages to achieve through BRICS will be the history. The question likely to outlast this summit is whether India can make BRICS actually work.