Look beyond the photographs. The real test of multipolarity is whether countries turn diplomatic symbolism into practical cooperation on trade, finance, connectivity, and security.

Watch financial infrastructure. De-dollarisation may dominate the headlines, but local-currency settlements, cross-border payment links, and development financing will reveal whether BRICS can create meaningful alternatives.

Hedge rather than choose. For countries like Bangladesh, India’s multi-alignment has a valuable lesson: cultivate constructive relations with competing powers without becoming too beholden to any one of them.

The most memorable moment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Bishkek lasted only a few seconds. As leaders gathered for the family photograph, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping were seen smiling, talking, and briefly holding hands. The image quickly travelled around the world, inviting an obvious interpretation: India, Russia and China were standing together as symbols of an emerging multipolar order.

But a handshake is not a treaty, and a photograph is not foreign policy. The more important question is whether the political symbolism of Bishkek can be translated into something more durable. That test will come soon, when India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12–13. With eleven member states representing Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, BRICS offers a much better opportunity to judge whether the language of multipolarity is acquiring institutional substance.

It would, however, be a mistake to interpret Bishkek as the beginning of an anti-American alliance. The SCO has not become such an alliance, nor is there much evidence that its members want to create one. What the summit revealed instead is a growing desire among very different countries to........

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