On January 1 India took over the BRICS Chair. On January 13 External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar launched the logo, theme and website of India’s Chairship. Speaking on the occasion Jaishankar noted “In 2026, BRICS will complete twenty years since its inception, during which it has steadily evolved into a significant platform for cooperation among emerging markets and developing economies”. It is true that the group of BRIC countries–Brazil, India, Russia and China–was originally conceived as a group of emerging economies. However, over the past two decades and more, the countries comprising the group have gone beyond the status of ‘emerging economies’.

In the 1990s Russian Foreign Minister Primakov mooted the idea that the interests of ‘emerging’ economies coincided. This was also the decade when the Cold War had ended and countries such as India and Russia had embarked on their economic liberalisation. As the century turned, the realization that these emerging economies offered markets was picked up by US financial companies. One of their executives thought in 2001 of a group consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China. At that stage the four countries could be considered emerging. This is because their GDP’s did not put them in the first rank of economies.

In 2001, China was sixth in the world behind the US, Japan, Germany, Britain and France; Brazil was at number ten and India at number........

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