How does an expanded BRICS (post-2024) alter India's balancing strategy between the Global North and Global South?

India assumed its fourth BRICS Chairship on 1 January 2026 and hosted the 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, on 12–13 September 2026 [1][2]. The post-2024 enlargement widens India's Global South platform, but simultaneously raises the cost of its long-standing multi-alignment with the North.

Enlargement deepens India's Global South leverage

• Membership now spans ten states — the original five plus Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE and Indonesia — extending BRICS across Africa, West Asia and Southeast Asia [1].
• India converted the Chairship into deliverables rather than declarations: over 350 meetings across 25 cities, culminating in the New Delhi Declaration, "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability" [1][3].
• Development-first outcomes — BRICS Centres of Excellence on Agro-Ecology, a Mission for Healthy Lifestyle, and MSME cooperation — make India a supplier of public goods, not merely a claimant [1][6].
• The New Development Bank, designed with equitable governance unlike existing multilateral development banks, gives the South a financing alternative [5].

But it constrains India's Northern balancing

• A larger, more heterogeneous bloc raises consensus costs and admits members seeking sharper anti-Western framing, which India resists.
• Currency and de-dollarisation debates risk friction with India's Northern economic partners.
• Expansion enlarges China's coalition-building space, threatening to dilute India's agenda-setting weight.

India's recalibration: reform, not rupture

• India positions BRICS as reformist rather than revisionist, pressing for time-bound reform of the UN Security Council, multilateral development banks and the WTO [4].
• The dedicated summit session on "Inclusive Global Governance and Strengthening Multilateralism" anchors this in representation, not confrontation [1].
• Issue-based plurilateralism lets India stay simultaneously credible in BRICS and in Northern groupings.

Expansion has therefore shifted India from balancing between blocs to brokering between them — using enlarged BRICS as leverage for institutional reform while preserving Northern partnerships. Sustained credibility will depend on delivering development outcomes for smaller members, keeping India's Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam framing substantive rather than symbolic.