The challenges for BRICS

Why in the News

India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September, twenty years after the grouping was formalised in 2006. The grouping now accounts for a larger share of world output than the G7 and has grown from four members to eleven. Expansion has made agreement harder rather than easier. The foreign ministers’ meeting earlier in 2026 closed without a joint declaration after two members on opposite sides of an active conflict clashed. The economic project shows the same gap, with the idea of a single BRICS currency shelved in favour of settling bilateral trade in national currencies.

How did BRICS grow from a four country dialogue into an eleven member bloc?

1. Origin in a growth forecast: BRIC began in 2006 with Brazil, Russia, India and China, following a Goldman Sachs projection identifying these economies as future engines of global growth.
2. From ministers to leaders: The format moved from a foreign ministers’ dialogue to a leaders’ forum, and the first summit was held at Yekaterinburg in Russia in 2009.
3. First enlargement: South Africa joined in 2010, and the grouping took its present name.
4. Second enlargement: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were added in 2024, and Indonesia became the eleventh full member in January 2025.

How does BRICS now compare with the G7 in economic weight?

1. The position in 2000: The four original members together accounted for roughly 23% of global GDP on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis, which compares economies using what a currency actually buys at home rather than at market exchange rates. The G7 held nearly 52%.
2. The position in 2024: The eleven member grouping accounted for approximately 36.8% of global GDP (PPP), and the G7 share fell below 29%.
3. Growth differential: BRICS economies are projected to grow by an average 3.8% in 2025 and 3.7% in 2026, more than three times the G7 average.
4. Prosperity tells a different story: Per capita GDP averages around $53,000 in the G7 against roughly $8,200 in BRICS.
5. What drives the aggregate: The bloc’s weight comes from population and resource scale rather than from individual prosperity.

Why has the grouping’s original grievance survived twenty years?

1. The founding complaint: Global institutions have not kept pace with the redistribution of economic and political power.
2. What the first summit asked for: Reform of the international financial institutions and of the United Nations, greater energy security, and a more democratic multipolar world order.
3. Still unmet: Those demands remain the grouping’s central agenda two decades later, which is why an economic forum has turned into a geopolitical one presenting itself as a voice of the Global South.

What does BRICS do for India’s strategy of multi alignment?

1. Membership without alliance: India participates simultaneously in BRICS, the G20, the Quad and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) without accepting alliance commitments.
2. The purpose of that spread: Multi alignment rests on strategic autonomy and is about creating room for manoeuvre rather than choosing between competing power centres.
3. The grouping is not anti Western by origin: BRICS emerged during an early phase of convergence between India and the United States on strategic questions.
4. India’s institutional contribution: India proposed a development bank at the 2012 New Delhi summit, and that proposal became the New Development Bank (NDB).
5. What the bank has done: By mid 2026 the NDB had approved approximately $44 billion across 141 projects.

What divides the members over what BRICS is for?

1. The Chinese and Russian reading: Both increasingly position the grouping as a counterweight to Western dominance and a platform to challenge United States led institutions and the dollar’s hegemony.
2. Beijing’s stake in size: China drove the enlargement, treating a larger grouping as a vehicle to project leadership of the Global South.
3. Moscow’s stake in survival: Excluded from the SWIFT messaging network that banks use to send cross border payment instructions, and facing sweeping sanctions, Russia treats BRICS as an economic lifeline.
4. The Indian and Brazilian reading: Both view BRICS primarily as an economic and reform oriented grouping.
5. Where the divergence became explicit: Russia demanded in 2023 that India pay for oil in yuan, and India refused, insisting on dollars or rupees only.

Why has expansion made consensus harder to reach?

1. The visible fault line: The BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New Delhi in May 2026 failed to agree on a joint declaration.
2. What caused the breakdown: Two member states on opposite sides of an active conflict, Iran and the UAE, confronted each other directly.
3. What the chair issued instead: India recorded a chair’s statement acknowledging “differing views among some members regarding the situation in West Asia”.
4. The structural point: BRICS operates on consensus, and every added member adds another veto on any text touching a geopolitical crisis.

What has replaced the idea of a single BRICS currency?

1. The currency idea is shelved: The United States President has threatened 100% tariffs on BRICS nations if they created a new currency or backed another currency to replace the dollar, and a single BRICS currency has largely been dropped.
2. Bilateral settlement instead: Members have moved to settling trade in national currencies, a decentralised route that needs no common institution. Russia and China now settle over 90% of their bilateral trade in ruble and yuan.
3. The India cases: Roughly 90% of direct payments between Russia and India have moved to national currencies through Special Rupee Vostro Accounts, which are rupee accounts that a foreign bank holds with an Indian bank, authorised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). India has run a rupee and dirham settlement system with the UAE since July 2023 and a rupee and rupiah framework with Indonesia since July 2026.
4. A payments layer, not a currency: BRICS Pay, to be unveiled at the 2026 summit, links national payment rails including Russia’s SPFS, China’s CIPS, India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix, so members can settle trade without routing through dollar correspondent banks.
5. India’s own preference: India pushes interoperable central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), meaning sovereign digital money that can move across systems, rather than a supranational currency.

How far has the dollar’s position actually weakened?

1. Reserve holdings barely moved: The dollar still accounted for 57.13% of global central bank reserves in the first quarter of 2026.
2. No member is building an alternative reserve: No BRICS member is accumulating rupee, yuan or rand reserves at meaningful scale.
3. The Western assessment: Western countries treat the grouping not as an immediate replacement for the existing international order, but as a platform capable of gradually reshaping the distribution of geopolitical power.

Challenges to BRICS

1. No permanent secretariat or charter: The grouping has no treaty, no standing staff and no institutional memory, so follow up on a summit commitment depends on whichever member holds the rotating chair. Eg. Implementation is tracked through each chair’s own sherpa arrangements rather than by a standing body.
   The Fix: Create a small permanent secretariat with a published implementation review against each summit declaration.
2. Unsettled disputes between members cap cooperation: India and China remain in an unresolved boundary dispute, which limits how far either will accept the other’s leadership of the bloc. Eg. The Galwan Valley clash of 2020 froze wider cooperation between the two for years.
   The Fix: Ring fence bilateral disputes into a separate channel so bloc business is not suspended whenever a member pair falls out.
3. The bank depends on the market it wants to bypass: The NDB raises much of its capital in dollar markets, so lending to a sanctioned member threatens its own credit standing and funding cost. Eg. The bank suspended new transactions in Russia in 2022 to protect its market access.
   The Fix: Expand local currency lending and local currency bond issuance so project finance does not rest on dollar funding.
4. Enlargement without an entry standard: Membership now spans oil exporters, sanctioned economies and aid recipients with little shared trade interest, which weakens any common negotiating position. Eg. Argentina abandoned its accession after being invited to join in 2023.
   The Fix: Publish objective accession criteria covering intra bloc trade share and acceptance of the reform agenda before any further enlargement.

Conclusion

BRICS has accumulated weight faster than it has accumulated agreement. Its economic case is largely settled and its political case is not. The marker to watch at the New Delhi summit is whether the chair closes with a text every member has signed or with a statement of its own. A second marker is whether the payments platform moves from launch to measurable settlement volume, since that is where the grouping’s stated ambition meets the actual behaviour of its members.

Back2Basics: New Development Bank

1. Founding instrument: The bank was established by an agreement signed at the 2014 BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, and began operations in 2015.
2. Headquarters: It is based in Shanghai, with its first regional office in Johannesburg.
3. Voting design: The five founding members hold equal shareholding, unlike the weighted voting used in the Bretton Woods institutions.
4. Membership beyond the founders: Bangladesh, the UAE, Egypt and Algeria have been admitted as members, so the bank’s membership is wider than the grouping itself.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS2, 10 marks] “BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South.” Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”