A bigger BRICS, shaped by India’s vision

The BRICS summit in New Delhi (September 12-13, 2026) will likely be a landmark one for a few causes. First, it takes place towards the backdrop of geopolitical turbulence unleashed by a mixture of forces: raging wars and conflicts, a breakdown in world governance and the altering nature of world alliances. Second, the BRICS now has 11 outstanding members (and about 10 of them who’re associate nations) and its collective financial output (in buying energy parity) outstrips that of the G-7, making it the one of many largest and most necessary transcontinental grouping exterior of the West. Final however not the least, technological forces equivalent to synthetic intelligence and quantum computing are being weaponised with each nice powers attempting to win the battle for tech supremacy.

India’s BRICS second

India have to be credited with thorough preparation for this summit. In some ways, India has adopted the profitable template established when it hosted the G-20 Summit in New Delhi in 2023. In the same vein, round 350 conferences have been performed by India in cities throughout the nation, with as many as 22 held on the ministerial stage. India has introduced that it’ll concentrate on “constructing resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability”, thus giving a brand new twist to the BRICS acronym. In doing so, India is in search of to refocus and recalibrate the BRICS agenda.

BRICS has historically comprised three pillars: political and safety; finance and the economic system; and, lastly, tradition and people-to-people exchanges. Whereas all three pillars are necessary and, certainly, interlinked to an extent, it’s the view of this author that the agenda pursued by India relates extra to the second and third pillars than to the primary. The leaders will largely resolve what to do with the massive geopolitical problems with our occasions. Nevertheless, substantive outcomes appear assured, given the end result of the conferences chaired by India thus far. Therefore, this author’s sentiment is that, it doesn’t matter what occurs on the summit stage, BRICS may have a lot to indicate when it comes to cooperation throughout numerous areas. Fairly merely put, BRICS is now too massive to both ignore or fail.

Constructing resilience, driving innovation

With regards to resilience, the work finished by BRICS underneath India’s stewardship has been stellar. This contains the launch of the BRICS Digital Centre of Excellence for Sensible Grids and Power Storage, the adoption of the BRICS Logistics Provide Chain Cooperation Framework, and the institution of the Centres of Excellence on Agro-Ecology and Regenerative Agriculture, to call only a few initiatives. As soon as operationalised, these initiatives will present the ballast wanted for BRICS nations to develop into actually resilient.

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On innovation, India has tried to push the envelope inside BRICS. Proposals equivalent to a start-up innovation fund, an incubator community, a digital public infrastructure repository, a science and analysis repository, and the motion plan of the BRICS Working Group on analysis infrastructures and mega science initiatives will likely be useful to all BRICS members, significantly since they don’t seem to be all on the similar stage of improvement in terms of scientific analysis.

On cooperation, the BRICS leaders will hopefully endorse suggestions pertaining to, however not restricted to, revitalising the multilateral buying and selling system; welcoming the community of centres of excellence on psychological wellness; establishing the BRICS urbanisation discussion board; enhancing the digital capability of ladies; and, extra broadly, intensifying cooperation in areas equivalent to training, youth skilling, and the BRICS Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Cooperation Portal. All of those initiatives present concrete advantages to the person (or girl) on the street in BRICS nations.

It’s significantly comforting to notice that “sustainability” may be very a lot a part of the Indian agenda. The Brazilians made it the centrepiece of their BRICS agenda final yr, and India seeks to construct on the place its Brazilian associates left off. There are particular areas of cooperation underneath this rubric: combating desertification; creating tips for catastrophe administration and forest-fire preparedness; the BRICS discussion board on sustainable aviation fuels; and advancing local weather resilience via people-centric and community-based adaptation. The final of those is crucial, since worldwide fora are likely to focus virtually completely on mitigation.

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The central tenet of the Indian agenda, as could also be seen from above, is to create a collaborative platform that permits the sharing of information and finest practices, facilitates joint analysis, and promotes capability constructing. If this isn’t a people-centric, humanity-first strategy, then what’s?

Conserving BRICS on the right track

BRICS is right here to remain and can, slowly however steadily, assist its members obtain two central goals: improve their strategic choices and drive geopolitics in direction of a really multipolar world. These are, in fact, organising ideas of India’s overseas coverage. In a world characterised by geopolitical uncertainty, different nations, too, see monumental worth in adopting a overseas coverage based mostly on these ideas. If there may be one caveat for the BRICS grouping, it’s this: it should keep away from getting caught in geopolitical currents that aren’t essentially of its making and positively not of any strategic worth for its members. All eyes could also be on leaders equivalent to Chinese language President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, appropriately. However the larger image stays that of the BRICS grouping dwelling as much as its full potential. The Delhi Summit must make concrete progress in direction of that finish.

Mohan Kumar is a former Indian Ambassador to France and at present Dean/Professor on the O.P. Jindal World College. The views expressed are private

Revealed – September 12, 2026 12:08 am IST