BRICS has evolved from a platform for multilateral economic reform to an increasingly geopolitically contested bloc. Discuss India's role in the 2026 Delhi Summit in restoring coherence to BRICS.

BRICS was conceived as a coalition of major emerging economies pressing for democratisation of global economic governance — greater voice in the IMF, World Bank and UN [1]. As India chairs the 18th Summit at New Delhi (September 2026) under the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability" [2], its task is to pull the grouping back toward that founding mandate.

From reform platform to contested bloc

• Original economic core: the New Development Bank, proposed at the 2012 Delhi Summit and established by the Fortaleza Agreement, 2014, was BRICS's flagship institutional deliverable for infrastructure and sustainable development finance [3].
• Enlargement and dilution: admission of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE, followed by Indonesia (2025), widened membership but multiplied divergent strategic interests within a consensus-based grouping with no permanent secretariat [1].
• Geopolitical drift: energy-security and currency debates, and the framing of BRICS as a counterweight to the West, have crowded out the reform agenda — a direction India does not share, given its multi-alignment and simultaneous Quad and G20 commitments.
• Internal frictions: unresolved India-China boundary differences limit trust and slow consensus outcomes.

India's role in restoring coherence

• Re-anchoring the agenda: steering deliberations back to reform of multilateral institutions and Global South development priorities, continuing the thrust of the Rio Declaration (2025) [4].
• Institution-building over rhetoric: deepening NDB lending, local-currency settlement and intra-BRICS trade, rather than symbolic anti-dollar declarations [3].
• Issue-based convergence: sustaining India-led tracks such as counter-terrorism cooperation, health, culture and skilling working groups [1].
• Managing expansion: using sherpa- and ministerial-level preparation to build workable consensus among eleven members and partner countries [5].

Coherence will return not through bloc politics but through demonstrable development outcomes. As chair, India can reposition BRICS as a reformist, non-adversarial voice of the Global South, consistent with its civilisational approach of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and the SDG agenda.