BRICS began as BRIC in 2006, and with the inclusion of South Africa, it acquired its present nomenclature in 2010. Five more countries—Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE—were admitted to the group as full members in 2024, followed by Indonesia in 2025.[4] Ten countries—Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam—joined as partner countries in 2025.[5]

In its two decades of existence, BRICS has often been viewed as Russia and China’s attempt to create an anti-West bloc that will eventually succumb to irrelevance under the weight of contradictions among its members. This view is premised on strategic and security divergences among BRICS members, differences in their governance models and deep variations in their economic scales and developmental priorities. Strategic mistrust and security issues between India and China are especially mentioned in this regard. It has also often been derided as a talking shop with no viable future. However, an examination of BRICS’ evolution belies this pessimistic critique. It establishes that BRICS has instead emerged as a force for good and can serve as an anchor for systemic stability.

In its evolutionary journey, BRICS has maintained a steady course unaffected by geopolitical instabilities. It has witnessed a fair degree of institutionalisation, as evidenced by the establishment of the New Development Bank (NDB, or BRICS Bank) in 2015. Over the years, its agenda has broadened and become only more comprehensive. Moving beyond discussions of ‘economic issues of mutual concern’ in its initial years, it has developed three well-defined, articulated core pillars for cooperative activities: ‘political and security cooperation, economic and financial cooperation, and people-to-people exchanges’.[6]

BRICS, which houses 49.5 per cent of the world population, 40 per cent of the GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms and 26 per cent of trade at present,[7] provides a consultative policy coordination mechanism to address global concerns such as terrorism, climate change, food and energy security, and disruptions in the international economy and finance. It seeks........

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