How do multilateral platforms like BRICS facilitate bilateral diplomacy between estranged neighbours? Discuss with reference to India-China ties.

When direct bilateral channels freeze, multilateral summits become diplomatic bridges — offering estranged neighbours a neutral, low-cost venue to resume contact. India-China engagement through BRICS after the 2020 border standoff illustrates this enabling role, though the platform supplements rather than substitutes for bilateral resolution.

How multilateral platforms enable bilateral re-engagement

• Face-saving optics: a meeting "on the margins" carries none of the domestic political cost of a standalone bilateral visit. PM Modi met President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the 16th BRICS Summit at Kazan on 23 October 2024 — the first structured leader-level engagement after the border crisis [2].
• Reviving dormant mechanisms: summits generate concrete follow-up. At Kazan the leaders agreed that the Special Representatives on the boundary question would meet early, and that Foreign Minister-level dialogue would be used to stabilise ties [2].
• Institutional compulsion to meet: rotating hosting creates contact regardless of bilateral mood. India's hosting of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi (2026) brings Xi to India for the first time since the 2nd Informal Summit at Mamallapuram, October 2019 [1][3].
• Parallel ministerial tracks: leaders travel with Foreign and Commerce Ministers, allowing trade and boundary issues to be pursued simultaneously without a separate bilateral round [3].
• Issue-based convergence: shared BRICS agendas — multipolarity, reform of global economic governance, development finance — build working trust that spills into contested areas.

Limits of the platform

• Sideline meetings are short and symbolic; core disputes — LAC delimitation, de-escalation of troop deployments — need dedicated bilateral machinery.
• Structural asymmetries endure: India's large trade deficit, Chinese export controls and India's investment screening remain unresolved [4].
• BRICS has no mandate to arbitrate member disputes; indeed, India-China friction itself constrains the grouping's cohesion.

Multilateral platforms thus function as circuit-breakers — restoring communication, sequencing agendas and generating momentum that dedicated bilateral mechanisms must then convert into settlement. For India, using BRICS to normalise engagement while holding firm on border and reciprocity concerns reflects a mature, interest-based diplomacy consistent with its strategic autonomy.