The BRICS Summit allows India to advance its global ambitions

Why in the News

India hosts the BRICS Summit at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, with leaders and representatives of 11 BRICS countries opening deliberations on the future of global governance. Forging a joint statement is never easy at a multilateral conference whose members are themselves parties to ongoing conflicts. The grouping was a five member body at India’s earlier hostings, where managing consensus was easier, and enlargement since 2024 has changed that. The largest share of the host’s difficulty comes from the United States, which has accused the bloc of working against the dollar and has threatened tariffs on every member over its payments agenda. India is at the same time seeking to restore ties with that administration on trade and on its Indo-Pacific strategy, so hosting the bloc risks the relationship the hosting is partly meant to balance.

Why is consensus harder than at India’s earlier hostings?

1. The scale of the responsibility: Hosting BRICS is the second time in recent years, after the G-20 Summit in 2023, that India has had to shoulder a major multilateral conference.
2. The earlier hostings were smaller: India hosted the coalition of emerging economies in 2012, 2016 and virtually in 2021, when it was a grouping of just five major powers.
3. Who joined: The expansion in 2024 added Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and Indonesia was inducted in 2025.
4. What the enlargement did and did not do: BRICS’ identity has evolved with the new membership. A common focus remains elusive.

Which conflicts among members block a common text?

1. Conflicts involving members have multiplied: Global conflicts involving BRICS members have grown alongside the enlargement.
2. The war involving Iran is the sharpest case: Iran is a victim of the United States and Israeli strikes, and the UAE was attacked by Iran in retaliation. Both are members of the grouping.
3. Neither will accept a shared account: Iran and the UAE have been unwilling to agree to a common narrative on the problem, which is precisely what a joint statement requires.
4. India’s own position has divided the grouping: India’s position on Israel came into conflict with other members earlier this year, since the grouping has traditionally taken a much more critical line on Israel’s actions.

Why does the United States pose the largest problem for the host?

1. The accusation is about the dollar: The United States President has accused the grouping of plotting to overthrow the United States dollar’s domination of the global economy.
2. The threatened instrument: He has been threatening tariffs on all members for planning to increase intra-BRICS payments and trade.
3. What India is attempting in parallel: The government is seeking to restore ties with the United States administration on trade and on its Indo-Pacific strategy.
4. The risk is not proportionate to the conduct: Hosting BRICS risks invoking American displeasure however irrational that displeasure is, so the host cannot manage the risk simply by adjusting the agenda.

Why is a grouping that refuses the anti-western label still a counter to the G-7?

1. The label the bloc rejects: The grouping prefers not to be called anti-western.
2. What it functions as: It is a powerful counter to the G-7 and to western-led thinking.
3. The scale behind the counter: BRICS accounts for half the world’s population, two fifths of the global economy and a fourth of global trade.
4. Its energy position: It includes many of the world’s top energy producers and its biggest consumers, which gives it weight in energy markets that requires no declaration to exercise.
5. The rise that produced this: BRICS was first conceptualised 25 years ago and convened a summit in 2009, and its countries have risen in global stature and economic heft since, with intra-BRICS trade benefitting.

What does the presidency deliver for India?

1. Heft on the global high table: Being part of BRICS gives India more weight in advancing its ambitions in global forums.
2. Visibility from the chair: The presidency has ensured India prominence on the world stage.
3. What a successful summit would signal: A presidency that reconciles the grouping’s competing strands would demonstrate the bloc’s capacity to act, and would count as a significant achievement for Indian diplomacy.
4. The cost side of the same presidency: The prominence comes with exposure, since the host is read abroad as the author of whatever the bloc’s declaration says.

Challenges to India’s BRICS presidency

1. Consensus gives every member a veto over the text: A declaration requires all eleven members to agree, so the member with the narrowest interest sets the ceiling on what the document can say. Eg. The bloc’s Rio declaration of 2025 ran to 126 points, which is what accommodating every member’s preferred language produces.
   The Fix: Move contested political language into a chair’s statement issued alongside the declaration, so a single dispute does not shrink the agreed economic text.
2. Enlargement raised the number of bilateral disputes inside the room: Every admission adds that member’s quarrels to the set the chair must accommodate in one document. Eg. The grouping now contains both Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose diplomatic relations were restored only in 2023.
   The Fix: Publish admission criteria requiring a candidate to hold working diplomatic relations with every existing member, so enlargement does not import an active rupture.
3. The forum has no secretariat to carry work between summits: BRICS has no treaty and no permanent staff, so each chair rebuilds the agenda and the follow up machinery for a single year. Eg. Ministerial and working group outcomes are recorded in a declaration with no standing body tracking their implementation.
   The Fix: Create a small permanent secretariat funded by member contributions, mandated only to track commitments made in past declarations.
4. The dollar question is a liability the bloc cannot settle: Members disagree on currency arrangements and the disagreement is read abroad as a shared plan, so the bloc absorbs the cost of a policy it has not adopted. Eg. Tariff threats have been aimed at every member over intra-BRICS payments, including at members that oppose a common currency.
   The Fix: State in the declaration that payment interoperability is a transaction cost measure and that no common currency is under consideration, so the agenda and the accusation are separated on the record.
5. A chair’s agenda outlives the chairship only if the successor adopts it: A one year presidency sets themes that lapse where the next chair’s priorities differ. Eg. The sustainability agenda India is building on was the centrepiece of Brazil’s chairship the previous year.
   The Fix: Record a three year rolling work programme in the declaration, so an incoming chair inherits commitments rather than restating themes.

Conclusion

The presidency’s difficulty is not the agenda but the arithmetic. A grouping of eleven operating by consensus produces the text its least flexible member will accept. India’s gain from the chair is visibility, and visibility is also what attaches the bloc’s positions to the host. The two objectives this summit is being judged against, a document every member can sign and a relationship with Washington that survives it, pull in opposite directions and neither has been given up. What to watch is how the declaration handles the payments question, since that single paragraph is where the summit’s diplomatic cost will be set.

Back2Basics: how BRICS takes decisions

1. It is an informal grouping: BRICS has no founding treaty, no charter and no permanent secretariat, so it operates as a coordination forum rather than as an international organisation.
2. The chair rotates annually: One member holds the chairship for a calendar year, hosts the leaders’ summit and sets the year’s agenda and meeting calendar.
3. Decisions are taken by consensus: Every outcome document is adopted by agreement among all members, so no member can be outvoted and any member can withhold language.
4. Outputs are political, not binding: A summit declaration records agreed positions and commitments with no enforcement mechanism, and implementation rests with each member’s own government.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS2, 10 marks] With the waning of globalization, post-Cold War world is becoming a site of sovereign nationalism. Elucidate.”