BRICS is growing, but consensus is shrinking. India’s real challenge is keeping the bloc useful without letting it become an anti-Western alliance.
India hosted the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12 and 13, at a moment when the grouping looks less like a unified bloc and more like ten countries pulling in different directions.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has described India's approach as "non-Western but not anti-Western", a formulation that captures New Delhi's central challenge. India wants to keep channels open with both Washington and Moscow while chairing a grouping that increasingly contains voices calling for a more confrontational posture toward the West.
That balancing act is harder than it sounds.
Russia and China have used BRICS meetings over the past two decades to push for de-dollarisation, promote BRICS-linked payment mechanisms and reduce the reach of Western financial sanctions and the SWIFT banking network. India, along with Brazil and South Africa, has been considerably more cautious. New Delhi has preferred to expand its economic and strategic partnerships with the United States and Europe rather than build an alternative bloc positioned against them.
This is not a new disagreement, but it has become sharper as global trade tensions and tariff disputes have forced countries to reconsider how much geopolitical confrontation they can afford.
BRICS Has an Internal Problem Too
The bloc's contradictions go beyond the East-West divide.
At the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting in May 2026, member states failed to agree on a joint declaration amid a sharp dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. The episode exposed a larger challenge facing an expanded BRICS.
The grouping has grown rapidly, adding Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia and the UAE to its founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. But several newer members also bring regional rivalries and competing interests that existed long before they joined BRICS.
A grouping created to give greater weight to the developing world must now manage active geopolitical tensions within its own membership. That makes consensus-based decision-making slower and more fragile than it was when BRICS consisted of five countries.
India's Pragmatic Response
India's response has been pragmatic rather than ideological.
During its presidency, India organised more than 350 meetings across 22 ministerial tracks and roughly 25 cities. The agenda covered areas including the New Development Bank, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, the Interbank Cooperation Mechanism and Digital Public Infrastructure.
The breadth of this activity points to India's underlying strategy. Instead of relying entirely on political declarations, New Delhi appears to be trying to keep BRICS useful through practical cooperation and institutions.
That approach also gives India room to manage disagreements without forcing every issue into a binary choice between the West and an emerging anti-Western bloc.
For New Delhi, the value of BRICS may therefore lie less in creating another geopolitical camp and more in building platforms through which developing economies can cooperate despite their differences.
What Should India's Presidency Be Judged By?
There is a strong case for judging India's BRICS presidency by outcomes that affect ordinary citizens across member countries rather than by how strongly the summit criticises Western policy.
Trade facilitation, technology cooperation, public health collaboration and infrastructure financing through the New Development Bank have a much more direct impact on people's lives than symbolic declarations on de-dollarisation.
India represents roughly a fifth of the world's population and has consistently used its position in BRICS to argue for the wider interests of the Global South. That position is different from the narrower geopolitical agenda that Russia and China sometimes advance when they push BRICS toward an explicitly anti-Western posture.
This distinction is important.
India does not need BRICS to become an anti-Western alliance to make the grouping more relevant. It can instead push for greater representation for developing economies in global institutions, stronger South-South trade and technology cooperation, and financial mechanisms that reduce excessive dependence on any single global power.
Two Visions of BRICS
At the same time, India cannot pretend that the geopolitical tensions inside BRICS do not exist.
Two very different visions of the group's future are competing for influence.
One sees BRICS as a platform for South-South cooperation, trade diversification and reform of institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.
The other sees it primarily as a loose coalition of countries unhappy with American dominance, useful for signalling opposition to Western policy rather than building durable institutions.
India's presidency has tried to keep the first vision ahead of the second. But maintaining that course requires New Delhi to resist pressure from more assertive members without publicly appearing to take sides against them.
That is the real diplomatic test.
The Real Measure of India's BRICS Presidency
Whether this year's summit produces lasting cohesion or simply avoids an open rupture may depend less on the wording of the final joint declaration and more on what happens after India's presidency ends.
Do the payment mechanisms continue to develop? Do New Development Bank projects expand? Do ministerial working groups continue to produce practical cooperation? Can the expanded membership find enough common ground to make BRICS institutions function despite its internal rivalries?
These questions will matter more than the rhetoric surrounding a single summit.
For a grouping as diverse as BRICS, quiet institutional progress may ultimately be more valuable than dramatic headlines.
India's turn at the helm should therefore be judged not by how loudly BRICS speaks, but by whether it leaves behind a grouping that is more useful, more representative and more capable of delivering practical cooperation among the countries of the Global South.
India hosted the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12 and 13, at a moment when the grouping looks less like a unified bloc and more like ten countries pulling in different directions.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has described India's approach as "non-Western but not anti-Western", a formulation that captures New Delhi's central challenge. India wants to keep channels open with both Washington and Moscow while chairing a grouping that increasingly contains voices calling for a more confrontational posture toward the West.
That balancing act is harder than it sounds.
Russia and China have used BRICS meetings over the past two decades to push for de-dollarisation, promote BRICS-linked payment mechanisms and reduce the reach of Western financial sanctions and the SWIFT banking network. India, along with Brazil and South Africa, has been considerably more cautious. New Delhi has preferred to expand its economic and strategic partnerships with the United States and Europe rather than build an alternative bloc positioned against them.
This is not a new disagreement, but it has become sharper as global trade tensions and tariff disputes have forced countries to reconsider how much geopolitical confrontation they can afford.
BRICS Has an Internal Problem Too
The bloc's contradictions go beyond the East-West divide.
At the BRICS Foreign Ministers' Meeting in May 2026, member states failed to agree on a joint declaration amid a sharp dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. The episode exposed a larger challenge facing an expanded BRICS.
The grouping has grown rapidly, adding Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia and the UAE to its founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. But several newer members also bring regional rivalries and competing interests that existed long before they joined BRICS.
A grouping created to give greater weight to the developing world must now manage active geopolitical tensions within its own membership. That makes consensus-based decision-making slower and more fragile than it was when BRICS consisted of five countries.
India's Pragmatic Response
India's response has been pragmatic rather than ideological.
During its presidency, India organised more than 350 meetings across 22 ministerial tracks and roughly 25 cities. The agenda covered areas including the New Development Bank, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, the Interbank Cooperation Mechanism and Digital Public Infrastructure.
The breadth of this activity points to India's underlying strategy. Instead of relying entirely on political declarations, New Delhi appears to be trying to keep BRICS useful through practical cooperation and institutions.
That approach also gives India room to manage disagreements without forcing every issue into a binary choice between the West and an emerging anti-Western bloc.
For New Delhi, the value of BRICS may therefore lie less in creating another geopolitical camp and more in building platforms through which developing economies can cooperate despite their differences.
What Should India's Presidency Be Judged By?
There is a strong case for judging India's BRICS presidency by outcomes that affect ordinary citizens across member countries rather than by how strongly the summit criticises Western policy.
Trade facilitation, technology cooperation, public health collaboration and infrastructure financing through the New Development Bank have a much more direct impact on people's lives than symbolic declarations on de-dollarisation.
India represents roughly a fifth of the world's population and has consistently used its position in BRICS to argue for the wider interests of the Global South. That position is different from the narrower geopolitical agenda that Russia and China sometimes advance when they push BRICS toward an explicitly anti-Western posture.
This distinction is important.
India does not need BRICS to become an anti-Western alliance to make the grouping more relevant. It can instead push for greater representation for developing economies in global institutions, stronger South-South trade and technology cooperation, and financial mechanisms that reduce excessive dependence on any single global power.
Two Visions of BRICS
At the same time, India cannot pretend that the geopolitical tensions inside BRICS do not exist.
Two very different visions of the group's future are competing for influence.
One sees BRICS as a platform for South-South cooperation, trade diversification and reform of institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.
The other sees it primarily as a loose coalition of countries unhappy with American dominance, useful for signalling opposition to Western policy rather than building durable institutions.
India's presidency has tried to keep the first vision ahead of the second. But maintaining that course requires New Delhi to resist pressure from more assertive members without publicly appearing to take sides against them.
That is the real diplomatic test.
The Real Measure of India's BRICS Presidency
Whether this year's summit produces lasting cohesion or simply avoids an open rupture may depend less on the wording of the final joint declaration and more on what happens after India's presidency ends.
Do the payment mechanisms continue to develop? Do New Development Bank projects expand? Do ministerial working groups continue to produce practical cooperation? Can the expanded membership find enough common ground to make BRICS institutions function despite its internal rivalries?
These questions will matter more than the rhetoric surrounding a single summit.
For a grouping as diverse as BRICS, quiet institutional progress may ultimately be more valuable than dramatic headlines.
India's turn at the helm should therefore be judged not by how loudly BRICS speaks, but by whether it leaves behind a grouping that is more useful, more representative and more capable of delivering practical cooperation among the countries of the Global South.
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