BRICS in New Delhi: From Global South Platform to Emerging Alternative

Along with India’s rapprochement with China, the New Delhi BRICS Summit showed that the group is no longer content to remain a platform for the Global South’s protest; it is beginning to build institutions, economic networks, and diplomatic alternatives of its own.

A summit held during a period of international turmoil

BRICS now includes 11 members – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Indonesia – together with 10 partner countries and about 30 with manifested interest to join the group. Since these countries have interests that often clash, the group comprises nations that are either strategic competitors or even parties to ongoing conflicts.

The task faced by India was therefore very great. It had to bring together the views of China and Russia with those of countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while at the same time taking account of Iran and yet maintaining India’s wide-ranging relationships with the United States, Europe, Japan, and the other Western countries. This was indeed the main dilemma confronting New Delhi: could a broader coalition among the members of the Global South retain its collective diplomatic influence in the face of serious disagreements within the coalition itself?

The response from New Delhi is more interesting than a success or a failure; BRICS has not turned into a military or an ideological alliance but has taken a step further towards becoming an institutional and economic platform, as proposed by Xi Jinping, which can provide alternatives to those structures that have traditionally been dominated by the West.

India’s new stance: one of multi-alignment, with a preference for the BRICS and the Global South

The most notable aspect of India’s stance was not the fact that New Delhi had given up multi-alignment since it had not. Instead, the summit showed that India’s policy of multi-alignment is now being carried out within a more robust Global South framework, the BRICS.

For many years India’s policy has aimed at strengthening cooperation with Washington; taking part in the Quad, a military grouping to share information and contain China; keeping up its strategic partnership with Russia; developing ties with the Gulf; and handling its tough relationship with China. The issue is that the current level of geopolitical instability is making it harder to maintain this transactional approach. Prior to the summit, India’s experience had shown that partnerships with a number of smaller or middle-sized countries could not on their own make up for the significance of China, Russia, and the broader BRICS system.

This helps to account for the most surprising development between the two countries at the summit: the quick improvement in relations between Beijing and New Delhi.

There was no expectation that a warming of such speed would occur between Beijing and Delhi.

The fact that Xi Jinping had returned to India after seven years and that he had a bilateral with Narendra Modi showed that both countries are coming to see the drawbacks of letting strategic competition turn into........

© New Eastern Outlook