New Delhi, Sept. 11 -- The 18th BRICS Summit opens in New Delhi at a moment when the grouping has never looked more formidable on paper - or more difficult to hold together politically. Its 11 members account for nearly half the world's population, about 40 per cent of global GDP and more than a quarter of global trade. Expansion has given BRICS greater weight, bringing major energy producers, African economies and Southeast Asia into a forum once dominated by five emerging powers. Yet size is not cohesion. The wars in Ukraine and West Asia, tensions involving Iran and the UAE, India-China friction and varying relationships with the United States expose how diverse the grouping has become. Even its strategic purpose is contested. Russia and China are more comfortable presenting BRICS as a counterweight to Western power, while India prefers an inclusive platform that strengthens the Global South without becoming an anti-Western alliance. The Delhi summit must demonstrate that diversity can produce cooperation rather than paralysis.
India's presidency offers a sensible route forward by concentrating on areas where interests overlap. Its theme - Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability - matters only if it produces mechanisms that function after leaders leave Delhi. The New Development Bank and Contingent Reserve Arrangement showed that BRICS can translate political intent into institutional architecture. The next stage should be equally practical. Finance ministers have called for reform of the IMF and World Bank and for more efficient cross-border payment systems. Proposals for a BRICS incubator network, startup innovation fund and logistics and supply-chain cooperation framework point towards areas where members can create measurable value. Cooperation on food and energy security, digital agriculture, health, disaster resilience, technology and resilient supply chains can benefit members regardless of geopolitical alignments. The objective should not be grand declarations about replacing the existing world order, but building credible institutions where existing arrangements fail developing economies.
That is why the recurring debate over de-dollarisation should not consume BRICS. A common currency is unrealistic for economies with profoundly different monetary systems and priorities. Improving settlement in national currencies, lowering cross-border transaction costs and making digital payment systems interoperable are more achievable goals. The same pragmatism should guide trade and development. BRICS cannot demand reform of global institutions while reproducing opacity, imbalance or dominance within its own structures. Smaller members must have genuine influence, projects must meet transparent standards, and cooperation must deliver benefits beyond summit communiques. For India, the opportunity is to steer BRICS away from ideological confrontation and towards functional multipolarity - countries need not agree on every war, alliance or geopolitical dispute to build useful mechanisms together. An enlarged BRICS has proved that much of the world wants greater representation in global governance. Delhi must now prove something harder: that representation can be converted into results. The measure of BRICS is no longer who joins it, but what its members can build together.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.