Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: India gears up for the BRICS leaders’ summit this weekend, Nepal’s youth movement marks its protest anniversary as the country reels from deadly floods, and Bangladesh’s energy crunch puts pressure on the government.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: India gears up for the BRICS leaders’ summit this weekend, Nepal’s youth movement marks its protest anniversary as the country reels from deadly floods, and Bangladesh’s energy crunch puts pressure on the government.

New Delhi Preps for BRICS Summit

India’s government is pulling out all the stops ahead of the BRICS leaders’ summit hosted in New Delhi on Sept. 12 and 13. Commandos are staging security protocol drills; police are carrying motorcade rehearsals; and city officials are executing a makeover that includes fixing roads, planting flower beds, and deploying BRICS branding.

BRICS—named after its original members of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—has long been a critical institution for India. New Delhi balances its membership in the grouping, meant to provide alternatives to Western economic institutions, with its close ties with the West; in doing so, it bolsters its strategic autonomy.

The core goals and priorities of BRICS align with Indian ones: engagement with the global south, advocating for United Nations reform, embracing multilateralism. Most BRICS members are also top Indian partners, and India’s ongoing albeit modest rapprochement with China certainly helps.

The grouping expanded in 2024, and aside from Iran, every new member is a close Indian friend. They include Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates.

This year’s leaders’ summit, which follows a BRICS foreign ministers’ forum in New Delhi in May, is especially significant for India, though. The high-level summit offers the world’s fastest-growing major economy an opportunity to showcase its convening power and reassert its global leadership.

India hasn’t regressed in this realm per se, but in recent months it has been somewhat upstaged in international diplomacy by its rival Pakistan, thanks to Islamabad’s lead mediation role in the Iran war and its increasing influence in the Middle East—from growing arms sales to participation in new bilateral and multilateral defense pacts with regional allies.

Further, the BRICS summit provides India with an important space for deeper engagement with the global south amid rising discontent with the Western-led global economic order. New Delhi takes very seriously its goal of becoming a leader of the global south—an objective tied to both its great-power aspirations and historical........

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