India’s BRICS diplomacy is more than one summit’s result

Why in the News

Eleven members of BRICS have adopted the New Delhi Declaration 2026 by consensus, reiterating the importance of the Palestinian question and the two state solution. The Rio BRICS Declaration 2025 had gone further, condemning the military strikes against Iran as a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. That formula was no longer available in Delhi. Iran had by then struck targets across the Gulf, including the territory of fellow BRICS members. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) had suspended trade and financial dealings with Tehran. The tension is whether a plurilateral forum is judged by the settlements it produces or by the dialogue it makes possible between members who have become belligerents against one another.

Why was the Rio formula unavailable in New Delhi?

1. Position in June 2025: Iran was a BRICS member that had been attacked, so every other member could condemn the strikes without contradicting its own position.
2. The February 2026 escalation: The United States and Israel struck Iran again. Iran responded by striking targets across the Gulf, including the territory of fellow BRICS members.
3. The UAE’s exposure: The UAE absorbed more Iranian projectiles than any other member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the six state grouping of Arab Gulf monarchies. It then suspended trade and financial dealings with Tehran.
4. Why the formula lapsed: The condemnation language became unavailable because members had become belligerents against one another, not because the chair lacked resolve.

What makes consensus among eleven members the achievement?

1. The ministerial failure: BRICS foreign ministers met in New Delhi in May 2026 and produced no outcome document at all.
2. The chair’s own assessment: The Ministry of External Affairs conceded in March that members were directly involved in the conflict, and that India as chair was working the Sherpa channel, the track of leaders’ personal representatives who negotiate summit texts before the leaders meet, to narrow differences.
3. The turnaround: Four months after the ministerial failure, eleven members adopted a declaration by consensus.
4. Precision where agreement existed: On the Palestinian question and the two state solution the language stayed precise rather than general.
5. A floor where it did not: On the contested questions the text built a floor instead of delivering a verdict.

Does a dialogue floor count as an outcome?

1. The competing standard: One view tests a forum such as BRICS on the tangible outcomes it produces, not on the agency for dialogue and diplomacy it provides.
2. Why that test misfires in a live conflict: The initiation of a dialogue cannot be expected to produce an immediate settlement, so judging it by the ends it may ultimately achieve dismisses it before it can work.
3. The first bilateral since the war: Iran and the UAE used the summit for their first high level bilateral meeting since the war began.
4. The declaration’s own significance: The importance of the West Asia text lies not only in what it says but in the fact that there was a declaration at all.
5. Means as outcome: Where members are themselves parties to the conflict, the floor a summit provides is the result rather than a step toward one.

What has a decade of Gulf engagement built?

1. A changed agenda: India’s engagement with the Gulf has shifted from oil and trade toward defence, technology and security.
2. Relationships across binaries: India’s relationships in West Asia are not organised as mutually exclusive choices between Iran and the Arab Gulf states.
3. Access on the Arab Gulf side: India can register the security anxieties of the Arab Gulf without treating Iran’s isolation as an objective.
4. Access on the Iranian side: India can engage Iran without appearing indifferent to Gulf security.
5. Strategic autonomy restated: Strategic autonomy does more than create manoeuvring room for India. It creates diplomatic room between others.

What are the limits of India’s position?

1. Not a mediator: A summit declaration does not make India a direct mediator in West Asia.
2. What formal mediation requires: Mediation requires acceptance by the parties, a mandate and a negotiating agenda, none of which a consensus text confers.
3. What India can offer instead: Trusted channels where they are scarce, political access across opposing capitals, and the ability to enlarge the space for accommodation.
4. The price not charged: That access is offered without demanding geopolitical allegiance from any of the parties.

Challenges to India’s BRICS diplomacy

1. Consensus rule lowers the ceiling: Every member holds an effective veto over the text, so an expanded membership reduces what any declaration can say. Eg. BRICS declarations record national positions on the Ukraine conflict rather than a common one.
   The Fix: Move contested items to issue based coalitions of willing members and keep the leaders’ declaration to the ground the whole group holds.
2. No standing institutional memory: The grouping has no charter and no permanent secretariat, so continuity depends on the capacity of each rotating chair. Eg. The New Development Bank in Shanghai is the only permanent BRICS institution with a headquarters and a staff.
   The Fix: Establish a small standing secretariat to carry the Sherpa agenda across chairs rather than rebuilding it annually.
3. Rivalry between the two largest members: India and China carry an unresolved boundary dispute into every agenda, which limits how far the group can act as a bloc. Eg. Disengagement along the Line of Actual Control has proceeded patrol point by patrol point through bilateral talks, never through a BRICS channel.
   The Fix: Keep bilateral disputes on bilateral tracks and confine the BRICS agenda to finance, health, space and technology, where member interests converge.
4. Expansion dilutes coherence: A grouping spanning democracies and autocracies finds shared positions on norms harder to draft as it grows. Eg. Full membership has moved from five states to eleven within two years.
   The Fix: Publish admission criteria tied to economic and functional contribution, so each addition does not further widen the range of positions to be reconciled.
5. Dollar dependence persists: The group’s financial alternatives remain marginal against dollar clearing, so the autonomy claimed in declarations is not matched by settlement practice. Eg. The US dollar still settles over 80% of global trade.
   The Fix: Extend existing bilateral local currency settlement arrangements to the trade flows that already run a recurring surplus, rather than pursuing a common currency.

Conclusion

The standard applied to a plurilateral grouping decides what it is seen to be worth. Judged by settlements signed, a forum whose members are firing at one another will always read as a failure. Judged by whether hostile parties still meet inside it, Delhi did the one thing that was no longer available to the chair at Rio. What to watch is whether the channels opened at the summit produce a second Iran and UAE meeting away from a summit setting, and whether the next chair carries the same text forward rather than reopening it.

About BRICS

1. Origin: The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 to group high growth emerging economies, the first foreign ministers’ meeting was held on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in 2006, and the first leaders’ summit was held at Yekaterinburg in 2009.
2. Membership: South Africa joined in 2011, expansion opened at the 2023 Johannesburg summit, and Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE joined in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025, taking full membership to eleven.
3. Weight: Members account for over 45% of world population, roughly 37% of global Gross Domestic Product measured at purchasing power parity, which exceeds the G7 share, and about 42% of global oil production.
4. Partner tier: A partner country category introduced in 2024 engages states such as Malaysia, Thailand and Nigeria without granting full membership.

Schemes and Initiatives for BRICS

1. New Development Bank (NDB): Headquartered in Shanghai, it finances infrastructure and sustainable development projects in member states and has approved over $35 billion in loans.
2. Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA): A $100 billion pool providing short term liquidity support to members facing balance of payments pressure.
3. BRICS Pay: A cross border payment system in pilot stage, intended to settle trade between members outside the SWIFT messaging network.
4. BRICS Vaccine Research and Development Centre: Launched during the pandemic to facilitate technology transfer and vaccine access across members.
5. Partnership on New Industrial Revolution (PartNIR): A standing cooperation track on artificial intelligence, digitalisation and green technology.
6. Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation: Six satellites contributed by member states sharing earth observation data for disaster management, alongside a BRICS Space Council set up in 2025 to coordinate deep space and lunar research.

Matching Previous Year Question

““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.”