India, Sept. 22 -- The 18th BRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on 12-13 September, closed India's fourth chairship of the grouping, following those of 2012, 2016 and 2021. It also came as BRICS marks two decades of cooperation, now with a much larger membership and a wider geographical reach than when it began. What distinguished India's year was less the summit itself than everything that surrounded it.

Opening the Summit, Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi described the Chairship as guided by a "people-centric and humanity-first approach", built around resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability, which was also the formal theme of the year. The New Delhi Declaration reaffirmed sovereign equality, mutual respect and conse...