BRICS in New Delhi: Big Promise, Poor Delivery

Can a bloc that cannot agree on money, war or strategic direction still reshape the world order?

By Prof Ujjwal K. Chowdhury

New Delhi can host a spectacular summit without producing a spectacular outcome. That may be the central paradox confronting BRICS today. The grouping has grown in size, ambition and political visibility, but its expansion has not necessarily translated into greater cohesion. It is too important to dismiss, yet too divided to lead a wholesale transformation of the international system. The real question is therefore not whether BRICS can replace the existing world order overnight, but whether its members can build enough common ground to gradually create alternatives to a system still dominated by Western institutions, the US dollar and American strategic influence.

BRICS began as an economic idea rather than a political alliance. The acronym was coined after Goldman Sachs identified Brazil, Russia, India and China as major emerging economies whose collective economic weight could eventually reshape global growth. Governments later turned the concept into a diplomatic forum. Over time, the grouping expanded, bringing in countries from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere. The enlarged BRICS now represents a much broader version of what is often described as the Global South. Its appeal lies partly in a shared frustration with an international system in which developing and emerging countries often believe their economic and political weight is not adequately reflected in institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

But a common grievance does not automatically create a common strategy. Multipolarity means different things to different BRICS members. For some, it means greater strategic autonomy from Washington. For others, it means reforming global institutions. For still others, it is an opportunity to increase economic influence without becoming tied to any single geopolitical camp. China sees an opening to expand its global influence, while India wants a more balanced international system in which no single power dominates. Russia views BRICS partly through the lens of resistance to Western pressure. Middle Eastern members have their own calculations involving energy, security and trade. The result is a grouping united more strongly by the desire for alternatives than by agreement over what those alternatives should look like.

The New Development Bank is perhaps the clearest example of what BRICS can achieve when its ambitions are translated into institutions. Created to finance infrastructure and sustainable development, the bank provides an alternative source of development finance and demonstrates that BRICS can create structures outside the traditional Bretton Woods system. The Contingent Reserve Arrangement also reflects an attempt to provide a financial safety net among member countries. These are not symbolic achievements. They show that BRICS can build useful institutions when members identify a practical common interest.

Yet these institutions are still far from constituting an alternative global financial order. BRICS has no common market, no free-trade regime comparable to the European Union, no common parliament, no supranational court and no mechanism that can compel members to follow collective decisions. Its members retain complete control over their monetary, fiscal and foreign policies. This is important because political slogans about a “new world order” can create the impression of a level of integration that simply does not exist.

The debate over a BRICS currency illustrates the problem particularly well. The idea of creating a common currency is politically attractive because it suggests liberation from dependence on the US dollar. But a currency is not simply a piece of financial infrastructure that countries can create by declaration. The euro became possible after decades of European economic and political integration, including common institutions, fiscal rules and increasingly interconnected markets. BRICS does not have anything comparable. Its members have radically different economic structures, inflation rates, interest-rate regimes, capital controls and levels of financial openness.

There is another difficulty: China dominates the economic weight of the expanded grouping. For India, reducing dependence on the dollar cannot mean replacing one form of dependence with another. A BRICS currency that effectively operates around the Chinese yuan could create strategic vulnerabilities of its own. That is why the more realistic path may be gradual rather than revolutionary. Greater use of local currencies in bilateral trade, interoperable payment systems, cross-border digital payments, central-bank digital currency experiments and more lending in national currencies could reduce some exposure to the dollar without attempting to create a euro-style BRICS currency.

The dollar’s strength also comes from much more than American political influence. It is supported by deep financial markets, global trade, the US Treasury market, international banking networks and decades of accumulated confidence. Challenging that ecosystem requires more than announcing a new currency. BRICS can diversify the international monetary system, but replacing the dollar is an entirely different proposition.

Wars and geopolitical crises reveal another fundamental contradiction inside BRICS. On issues such as Ukraine and the conflicts in West Asia, members do not share identical positions. India, for example, has attempted to maintain relations with Russia while simultaneously deepening ties with the United States, Europe, Israel and the Gulf countries. China has its own strategic calculations. Russia’s relationship with the West has been fundamentally transformed by the Ukraine war. Middle Eastern countries have priorities shaped by regional security and energy politics. Under such circumstances, BRICS can produce carefully negotiated diplomatic language, but that is not the same as possessing a unified strategic doctrine.

This distinction matters. A forum that can agree to cooperate on development finance, technology, trade and payments does not automatically become a geopolitical alliance. BRICS is better understood as a platform where countries with overlapping but often competing interests can coordinate selectively. Its strength may therefore lie precisely in its flexibility. The grouping does not need to become a military or political bloc to remain consequential.

India’s relationship with China is perhaps the clearest test of this approach. New Delhi and Beijing share an interest in reducing excessive dependence on Western-led institutions and promoting a more multipolar world. Yet they remain strategic competitors. The unresolved border dispute, the legacy of the Galwan clash, trade imbalances, competition in the Indian Ocean and China’s growing influence across India’s neighbourhood all complicate their relationship.

A meeting between Indian and Chinese leaders on the margins of a BRICS summit can therefore be diplomatically significant, but it should not automatically be interpreted as a strategic breakthrough. Improved communication can reduce the risk of confrontation, but it cannot erase structural competition. For India, the challenge is to engage China where cooperation is useful while preventing BRICS from becoming a China-centric platform.

That concern becomes even more relevant as the grouping expands. A larger BRICS gives the organisation greater geographical and economic reach, but expansion can also make consensus more difficult. The more countries that sit around the table, the more national interests have to be reconciled. What appears impressive on a map may be much harder to translate into common policy.

The return of Donald Trump and the prospect of renewed US pressure on BRICS add another layer to the equation. Threats of tariffs or economic penalties may encourage member states to diversify their payment systems and reduce their exposure to American financial instruments. But pressure from Washington is unlikely to erase the differences among BRICS members. Countries that depend heavily on US markets, technology, investment or security relationships will calculate the risks differently from those seeking to reduce Western dependence more aggressively.

Indeed, American pressure could unintentionally strengthen one part of the BRICS agenda while weakening another. It may encourage local-currency trade and financial diversification, but it could also expose how difficult it is for countries with very different economic interests to act collectively. BRICS cannot become coherent simply because another power opposes it.

This is also why comparisons between BRICS and the European Union are misleading. The European project was built through an extraordinary process of institutional integration in which member states gradually accepted restrictions on their own sovereignty in exchange for collective benefits. BRICS members show little appetite for such pooling of sovereignty. They want cooperation without surrendering strategic autonomy. That is not necessarily a weakness; it is simply a different model.

The likely future of BRICS, therefore, may be less dramatic than some of its rhetoric suggests. Instead of becoming a unified alternative to the West, it may develop into a network of practical arrangements covering payments, infrastructure, development finance, energy, food security, technology, climate resilience and disaster management. Such cooperation may appear modest compared with the language of a “new world order”, but it could prove more durable precisely because it does not require ideological uniformity.

For India, the New Delhi summit also has a domestic political dimension. Hosting a large and diverse grouping gives the government an opportunity to project India as a diplomatic bridge between developed and developing economies, between Western and non-Western powers, and between competing geopolitical camps. It reinforces the image of India as a country capable of engaging Washington, Moscow, Beijing, the Gulf and the wider Global South simultaneously.

But diplomatic spectacle cannot substitute for measurable outcomes. A successful BRICS summit should ultimately be judged by what happens after the photographs, speeches and declarations. Can member states increase trade in local currencies? Can the New Development Bank expand financing meaningfully? Can payment systems become easier to connect? Can members cooperate on climate adaptation and disaster resilience? Can they reduce transaction costs for businesses and improve economic connectivity? Can they create transparent mechanisms for implementing decisions?

These are less glamorous questions than whether BRICS will create a common currency or overthrow the dollar. They are also far more realistic.

The greatest danger for BRICS is therefore not failure in the conventional sense. It is the widening gap between rhetoric and delivery. Every summit can produce ambitious declarations, but if those declarations are not followed by implementation, the organisation risks becoming a diplomatic theatre rather than an engine of systemic change.

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the strategic calculation is consequently straightforward even if the diplomacy is complicated. India has little reason to abandon BRICS. It provides access to emerging markets, development institutions and diplomatic platforms outside traditional Western alliances. At the same time, India has no reason to allow BRICS to define its entire foreign policy. New Delhi’s relationships with the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia, Russia, Israel and the Gulf are too important to sacrifice for ideological neatness.

The real meaning of Indian strategic autonomy is therefore not choosing one camp over another. It is developing enough economic, technological, military and diplomatic capability to work with different camps without becoming dependent on any one of them.

BRICS can contribute to that autonomy, but it cannot manufacture it.

The New Delhi summit should consequently be judged neither as a historic birth of a new world order nor as an empty diplomatic exercise. It is something more complicated. BRICS remains one of the most visible platforms through which emerging powers can challenge the concentration of global economic and political power. Its institutions have produced tangible results, and its members collectively possess enormous demographic, economic and resource advantages.

But its internal contradictions remain formidable. There is no common currency, no unified position on major wars, no shared strategic doctrine and no settlement of the India-China rivalry. Its members want a more multipolar world, but they do not necessarily agree on what that world should look like.

The verdict, then, is neither triumph nor failure. BRICS is a work in progress — a platform for bargaining, experimentation and gradual diversification rather than a ready-made replacement for the existing international order. Its importance lies not in whether it can suddenly dethrone the dollar or create a geopolitical super-bloc, but in whether it can turn shared dissatisfaction into practical institutions.

For now, BRICS is better understood as a barometer of multipolarity than its engine. It reflects a world in which power is becoming more dispersed, but it has yet to develop the trust, institutions and common interests needed to organise that power effectively.

Multipolarity without trust is ultimately just a crowded photograph. The real test for BRICS is whether the countries standing together in that photograph can actually agree on what they want to build.