Why BRICS Matters for the Emerging Multipolar World

BRICS has yet again demonstrated its paramount importance as an institution by gathering the significant economies of the world and strengthening the multipolar world.

India as the BRICS Chair

India’s presidency showcases India’s growing ambition. New Delhi has showcased its innovations and sustainability by bringing together eleven prominent emerging and developing economies, under the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability.” During the summit, the BRICS countries addressed various issues spanning from economic cooperation and trade to payment systems and mechanisms, and energy and technology, to further collaboration and the reform of global governance, while addressing geopolitical tensions sparked by the Middle East and Ukraine.

Although, it is not uncommon to describe BRICS as an “anti-Western” grouping, this should not be the only or primary reading of BRICS. India has many strategic partnerships with the U.S. and the Europe. Brazil and South Africa also wish to engage both Western and Eastern powers. China and Russia are more interested in asking for rebalancing within the West. Some of the other members also seek their own type of strategic autonomy. BRICS therefore, does not have the same sort of ideological alignment as we would expect of a traditional alliance. It is this absence of ideological sameness that gives BRICS its value and makes it an important example of a multipolar world.

BRICS for a Multipolar World

A multipolar world does not mean that we trade Washington for Beijing or that we change one hierarchy for another. This means that numerous, mutual centres of economic, political, and diplomatic powers will coexist. BRICS provides a structure or framework for countries that have hitherto been devoid of, or possessed limited ability to, shape the rules of world governance, to speak as one without the need to be in full agreement on all issues of great power politics.

This is relevant as the distribution of economic power has changed more rapidly than the architecture of........

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