'BRICS speaks the language of sovereign equality but its practice often diverges.' Comment with examples.

Sovereign equality — the UN Charter's founding principle that all states stand equal regardless of size or power [1] — is the vocabulary BRICS has adopted as a grouping of emerging economies seeking a multipolar order [2]. The claim is largely fair: BRICS institutionalises equality well, but its members' bilateral conduct and internal asymmetries often betray it.

Where the language is matched by practice

• Institutional design: the New Development Bank distributes founding capital equally among Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, gives each one vote, and no member a veto — a deliberate contrast with the weighted voting of the Bretton Woods institutions [3].
• Consensus norms: BRICS has no permanent secretariat or headquarters; the chairship rotates annually, with India assuming it on 1 January 2026 and hosting the 18th Summit at New Delhi (12–13 September 2026) [4].
• Enlargement: the 2024 expansion to Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the UAE widened representation of the Global South rather than concentrating it [2].

Where practice diverges

• Economic asymmetry: China's economy dwarfs the rest, and India's trade deficit with China — its widest with any partner, exceeding $100 billion in FY 2025-26 — reflects a dependence that formal equality does not dissolve [5].
• Unequal support on reform: India and Brazil press through the G4 for expansion of the UNSC's permanent category [6], yet their BRICS partners in the P5 have stopped short of endorsing that core demand.
• Conduct versus principle: invocations of non-interference and peaceful settlement sit uneasily with unresolved boundary frictions and the use of hard power by members within their own neighbourhoods.

BRICS's rhetoric therefore runs ahead of its record — but rhetoric that binds is still valuable, since members can be held to standards they have themselves proclaimed. India's 2026 theme of resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability [4] offers exactly that opening: converting declaratory equality into rule-based, transparent BRICS mechanisms would make the grouping a credible carrier of the Charter values it invokes.