Editorial: Strengthening BRICS

By adding six new members, the bloc has become more balanced while being a voice of the Global South

The expansion of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping, at its summit held in Johannesburg recently, signals the shifting equations in the global order and India’s growing footprint in international geopolitics. By adding six new members — Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, and Ethiopia, the alliance has given itself a more balanced look, further strengthening its claim of being a voice of the Global South. However, there are concerns that the expanded bloc would be more pro-China, a prospect that is not in the best interests of India. A counterargument could also be made on the grounds that all the new members are India’s potential trade and business partners and with whom New Delhi has cordial relations. BRICS currently represents around 40% of the world’s population and more than a quarter of the world’s GDP. With the new additions, it will represent almost half the world’s population and will include three of the world’s biggest oil producers, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran. It also brings together the countries with deep pockets to recapitalise the New Development Bank (NDB), a multilateral development bank established by the member states. The formation of BRICS in 2009 was driven by the idea that the four emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China would be the future economic powerhouses of the world. South Africa was added a year later.

The BRICS is in dire need of rejuvenation and modernisation and needs to move beyond the success of the NDB, which admittedly has risen to the challenge of meeting the needs of its members and other developing countries without the onerous terms that the IMF, World Bank and Asian Development Bank are prone to imposing as per the agenda of their predominantly western and Japanese shareholders. India’s growing influence in the changing global order can be gauged from the fact that it is part of both the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) comprising Australia, Japan, the US and India, widely perceived as being pro-West, and also the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) which has Russia and China among its members. This is in line with New Delhi’s current policy of multi-alignment and maintaining its strategic autonomy. While India is close to Western powers, including the US and Japan, particularly due to shared interest in checking China’s increasing clout, its membership in the SCO could be seen as an attempt to increase engagements with the Eurasian region and also intensify its close ties with Russia. While the economic performance of BRICS has been mixed, the war in Ukraine — which has brought the West together on the one hand and strengthened the China-Russia partnership on the other — has turned it into an aspiring bloc that can challenge the western geopolitical view and emerge as a counterweight to the Group of 7 and the World Bank.

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