The Lift Line
BRICS has strayed quite far from where it started; the Delhi summit is the chance to bring it back.
Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam
BRICS is a near-certain 2026 current affairs topic because India hosts the 18th Summit at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, on 12 and 13 September 2026 under its chairship. Most answers will list members and initiatives; the piece that supplies the argument, why the group has drifted and what course correction would look like, is the one that gets marks. It reads directly alongside our 18th BRICS Summit curtain-raiser.
GS Paper 2: Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests; important international institutions, agencies and fora.
| Concept | Meaning | Why it is testable |
|---|---|---|
| Reformed multilateralism | Argument that existing global institutions must be reformed to reflect shifted economic weight, rather than replaced with parallel bodies | The specific Indian framing at BRICS from 2018 onwards |
| Consensus principle | Every member must agree to a joint document | What has held BRICS together and what an expanded group is straining |
| Non-West vs anti-West | A grouping that seeks multi-alignment across camps versus one that defines itself in opposition to the West | The line India is trying to hold at the summit |
| BRICS-Plus / BRICS Outreach | Formats through which BRICS engages a wider Global South | China’s preferred instrument for extending its profile through the group |
Background and Context
This is a signed opinion column by T.S. Tirumurti, formerly India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and India’s BRICS Sherpa, and the argument below is his rather than the newspaper’s.
BRICS was formed to give Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the emerging economies, a greater voice in global governance, and particularly in financial and economic institutions. India has held the BRICS chairship since 2026, having assumed it on 1 January 2026, under the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, and the 18th BRICS Summit is scheduled for 12 and 13 September 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi.
The grouping today counts eleven members, following the addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, alongside ten partner countries. The 4th BRICS Summit hosted by India in 2012 under the theme “Global Stability, Security and Prosperity” helped establish the New Development Bank; later Indian initiatives integrated a counter-terrorism architecture into BRICS work.
The Analysis
1. The original purpose was reform, not opposition. BRICS was set up to secure a greater emerging-economy voice in institutions of global governance, particularly financial and economic ones. Prime Minister Modi first articulated the vision of “reformed multilateralism” at the 2018 Johannesburg leaders’ retreat, and the framing entered the 2019 Brasilia summit document on the joint push of India, Brazil and South Africa. This is the vocabulary the piece asks India to revive at Delhi.
2. China’s divergence appeared early, and it was selective. India, Brazil and South Africa realised that Chinese support for institutional reform was selective, most sharply on the reform of the United Nations Security Council where China did not back their bids for permanent membership. From there, BRICS-related energies split. India pushed intra-BRICS consolidation; China pushed BRICS-Plus and BRICS Outreach to widen its Global South profile, treating the grouping as part of an emerging bipolar order.
3. Expansion has diluted cohesion. The original five have serious differences but have handled them with a mature consensus discipline. New members do not carry that habit and are subverting the group through bilateral quarrels, raising the risk that BRICS goes the way of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which bilateral disputes paralysed. The BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting of May 2026 in New Delhi could not agree, an early warning that consensus is fraying.
4. The consensus principle has already been bypassed once, and this is the sharpest example in the piece. The 2019 Brasilia summit met with only the five original members and no invited guests. Under the Russian presidency in 2020, however, the first non-consensus chair’s statement on COVID-19 was issued. If non-consensus texts become the norm, BRICS ceases to be effective, because the source of its influence has always been that its five originals could speak with one voice.
5. The tussle over direction has intensified. India has tried to keep BRICS a “non-West” grouping and to resist a slide into an “anti-West” one. The pressures against that line are three: US punitive tariffs on Brazil and India, congressional legislation being considered that would give the President the power to levy punitive tariffs on countries importing Russian oil, and the weakening of the Quad as US policy grows erratic and Pakistan is courted at India’s expense. India’s effort is nonetheless shared by many other members, which is the reason the non-West line remains viable.
6. The parallel-structures agenda is the deeper worry. Both the US and China are enunciating parallel visions of the world and setting up parallel institutions, from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and Belt and Road Initiative to the Digital Silk Road, and now a new World AI Cooperation Organisation launched in Shanghai. The de-dollarisation push has met a lukewarm response inside BRICS because most members are uncomfortable with a renminbi-dominated arrangement and prefer interlinking payment systems, central bank digital currencies and national-currency transactions. China’s mBridge is being formally launched after a pilot, but as our companion editorial explains, the platform settles over 95 per cent of its volume in the digital yuan today.
7. The middle-power argument gives BRICS its distinctive place. In Davos, the Canadian Prime Minister spoke of a coming together of broadly West-centric middle powers. A Global South middle-power grouping is different, and BRICS remains the credible instance of it, even if some members that ought to be there are missing and one member is not a middle power at all. That is the coalition India can convene.
8. The Delhi summit is a hinge moment, not a set piece. The 2026 summit provides an opportunity for course correction: to revive the founding raison d’etre, to shape the expanded grouping into a vehicle for reform and stability, to reinstate the consensus principle in practice and to stop others hijacking the agenda into a bloc formation. Failure to do so hands the direction of the group to those who would take it elsewhere.
Data and Institutions Vault
Prelims-grade facts:
The summit:
- The 18th BRICS Summit is scheduled for 12 and 13 September 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi.
- India has held the BRICS chairship since 2026, having assumed it on 1 January 2026 in succession to Brazil.
- India’s chairship theme is “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.”
- Prime Minister Modi frames the year’s work around “Humanity First” and a “people-centric” approach.
- The 4th BRICS Summit, hosted by India in 2012, was themed “Global Stability, Security and Prosperity.”
The membership:
- BRICS today has eleven members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia.
- The grouping also has ten partner countries.
- BRICS countries accounted for close to 20 per cent of world GDP in 2010; the expanded grouping accounts for a substantially larger share today.
The institutions:
- The New Development Bank, established with an Indian push and headquartered in Shanghai, is the BRICS development finance institution.
- The 2020 Russian presidency issued the first non-consensus chair’s statement, on COVID-19, bypassing the consensus principle.
- The BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New Delhi in May 2026 could not agree, an indicator of fraying cohesion.
- Reformed multilateralism was first articulated by Prime Minister Modi at the 2018 Johannesburg summit leaders’ retreat.
- The framing entered the 2019 Brasilia summit document, pushed by India, Brazil and South Africa.
The competing agenda:
- China’s parallel structures include the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Belt and Road Initiative and the Digital Silk Road.
- A new World AI Cooperation Organisation was launched in Shanghai in 2026.
- The de-dollarisation push through a parallel BRICS currency has met a lukewarm response inside BRICS.
- Most members prefer interlinking of payment systems, CBDCs and national-currency transactions to a common currency.
- China is formally launching mBridge, its cross-border multi-CBDC payments platform, after a pilot.
Watch the trap: BRICS does not have a single reserve currency, and the “BRICS currency” idea has not received consensus support. What is actively on the table is payments interoperability and CBDC linkage. Confusing the two costs marks.
The Debate
FOR restating the reform agenda: BRICS was created to reform existing institutions, not to replace them, and reform is what the middle-power members of the group actually want. Reinstating the consensus principle, embedding reformed multilateralism in the declaration and delivering on payments interoperability and counter-terrorism cooperation keeps the grouping useful, distinct and open. This is the coalition of Global South middle powers that no other body offers.
AGAINST the middle line: With the United States acting erratically towards India, courting Pakistan and paralysing global institutions, insisting on a non-West rather than anti-West line reads as a nostalgic reflex. On this view, aligning firmly with China and Russia inside BRICS gives India more leverage than a middle path that satisfies neither camp. The costs of the reformist line, punitive tariffs on Brazil and India today, may come without any of the pay-offs.
Balanced verdict: The reformist line has always been the one that best fits India’s multi-alignment strategy, because it keeps every door open and hard-codes India’s founding purpose in the group’s vocabulary. What is missing is not the framing but the deliverables. If Delhi produces concrete work on UNSC reform, cost-cutting payments interoperability of the Project Nexus and CBDC-linkage kind, counter-terrorism cooperation and climate finance, the reform line stops being a slogan and starts being an operational programme, which is the strongest defence against an anti-West drift.
How to Think About This
For any expanding regional or plurilateral group, ask three sequential questions before assessing performance. First, does the founding purpose still organise the agenda, or has membership drift blurred it? Second, is the working rule, whether consensus, weighted vote or coalition, still respected in practice? Third, is the group producing measurable deliverables its members can point to, or is it becoming a summit-and-declaration circuit? A grouping that fails all three is on the SAARC trajectory. A grouping that passes even one has a way back. BRICS at Delhi is a live test of all three at once, which is why the summit deserves the substantive follow-up it will get in exam papers for years.
Diagram-in-Words
PYQ Linkage
- UPSC CSE Mains 2020, GS2: “'The China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is viewed as a cardinal subset of China’s larger One Belt One Road initiative. Give a brief description of CPEC and enumerate the reasons why India has distanced itself from the same.” Uses the same China parallel-architecture theme.
- UPSC CSE Mains 2017, GS2: “The question of India’s Energy Security constitutes the most important part of India’s economic progress. Analyse India’s energy policy cooperation with West Asian countries.” Reads across the Iran and Saudi Arabia membership expansion.
- UPSC CSE Mains 2015, GS2: “Discuss the impediments India is facing in its pursuit of a permanent seat in UN Security Council.” Directly on the reform of multilateral institutions that BRICS was set up to advance.
Sources: The Hindu, Ministry of External Affairs
India’s chairship of the 18th BRICS Summit (12 and 13 September 2026, Bharat Mandapam) is an opportunity to revive the group’s founding purpose of reformed multilateralism and to prevent an expanded and internally divided BRICS from being pulled either into Chinese-led parallel structures or into a purely anti-West posture.
- BRICS was formed to secure a greater voice for emerging economies in global economic and financial institutions; India’s 2012 chairship helped create the New Development Bank and later a counter-terrorism architecture, both reformist rather than confrontational.
- Expansion to eleven members has diluted cohesion, with new entrants importing bilateral disputes into the group and the sacred principle of consensus already bypassed once, when the 2020 Russian chair issued a non-consensus statement on COVID-19.
- China has pushed BRICS towards parallel structures, from the New Development Bank’s enlargement to the launch of a World AI Cooperation Organisation in Shanghai and the mBridge payments platform, and treats the group as a vehicle for consolidating a second pole in a bipolar world.
- The pressure to turn BRICS anti-West has grown with punitive tariffs on Brazil and India, congressional proposals to penalise buyers of Russian oil, and a weakened Quad; India’s response is to preserve a non-West but not anti-West line shared by many other members.
A rival view holds that with the United States acting erratically towards India, courting Pakistan and paralysing global institutions, an unapologetically Global South posture may serve India better than a middle path that risks satisfying no one. On this reading, insisting on non-alignment inside BRICS is a nostalgic reflex that ignores how the world outside has moved.
Use the New Delhi summit to reinstate the consensus principle, embed reformed multilateralism in the declaration and channel practical work into UNSC reform, cost-cutting payments interoperability of the Project Nexus and CBDC-linkage kind, counter-terrorism cooperation and climate finance, so that the grouping’s value is measured by what it delivers rather than by who it opposes.
BRICS was founded to give emerging economies a greater voice in the reform of global governance institutions. Examine the ways in which the expansion of the grouping has strained that founding purpose, and assess how India, as chair of the 18th BRICS Summit, can revive it. (250 words)
BRICS was created to amplify the voice of large emerging economies in the reform of global governance, and its founding architecture, from the New Development Bank in 2015 to the counter-terrorism cooperation stream, tracks that reformist purpose. Expansion to eleven members and a shifting geopolitical setting have strained that purpose, which places the 18th summit at the point where the group’s direction is genuinely up for decision.
Three pressures explain the strain. First, cohesion has been diluted by enlargement.
Bilateral disputes among new entrants now enter the group as institutional friction and the consensus rule, which had kept the original five holding together despite serious differences, has already been bypassed once, when a non-consensus chair’s statement on COVID-19 was issued in 2020. Second, the reformist agenda has been overtaken in some quarters by an agenda of parallel structures, seen in the enlargement of the New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Belt and Road Initiative and, more recently, in a World AI Cooperation Organisation in Shanghai and the mBridge cross-border payments platform.
The risk is a two-tier order in which one pole simply mirrors the other, rather than the Bretton Woods institutions being genuinely reformed. Third, external shocks are pushing the grouping towards a bloc identity.
Punitive tariffs on Brazil and India, congressional proposals to penalise importers of Russian oil, a weakened Quad and the courting of Pakistan by the United States all raise the cost of the non-West line and the temptation of the anti-West one. The reformed-multilateralism vision, first articulated at the 2018 Johannesburg leaders’ retreat and reflected in the 2019 Brasilia document, remains the principled reconciliation, and it needs concrete practical carriers, from institutional reform of the United Nations Security Council to interoperable payments infrastructure and climate finance, if it is to be more than a slogan.
The Delhi summit is therefore a hinge moment. If it restates the consensus principle, embeds the reformed-multilateralism agenda in the declaration and produces deliverables measurable in institutional reform, payments interoperability and counter-terrorism cooperation, the grouping recovers its founding purpose.
If it does not, BRICS drifts either towards a parallel Chinese-led architecture or towards a bloc identity that few of its own middle-power members actually want.
Interview Angle
"A grouping that started as a voice for institutional reform now risks being read as an anti-West bloc. If India is chair, where do you draw the line between multi-alignment and non-alignment, and what does that line look like in a summit declaration?"
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