Opinion | India’s Role in BRICS and Beyond

“Through BRICS, India is not choosing sides,it is building bridges, shaping a multipolar world with balance, wisdom, and strategic independence.”

India is playing an important role in world politics today, especially through a group called BRICS. BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. This group started as just an idea in 2001 when an economist named Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs noticed that these countries were growing fast and could become very powerful. By 2006, they actually started meeting together, and in 2010, South Africa joined to make it BRICS. Now, this group has become much bigger and more important. Recently, they added five new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran. They also have ten partner countries including Vietnam, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan. Together, all these countries represent almost half the world’s people, about 40% of all the money made globally, and about 26% of world trade. That’s huge! What makes India special in this group is how carefully and cleverly it plays its role. India doesn’t just blindly support everything BRICS wants to do. Instead, it thinks carefully about which new members to welcome, making sure they are countries that will help India’s own goals. For example, India was happy when the UAE joined because it has good business relationships with the UAE. India uses BRICS to achieve two main things: first, it wants to have more say in how the world is run, especially in big organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations, which have been dominated by Western countries for too long. Second, it wants to keep good relationships with everyone – not just Western countries like America, but also with developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is tricky because within BRICS itself, India has to deal with China, which is sometimes a friend and sometimes a competitor, and Russia, which has complicated relationships with the West. But India handles this very smartly by being flexible and not taking extreme positions. When it comes to money and trade, BRICS has been great for India. India’s trade with other BRICS countries reached $399 billion in 2024, which is a lot of money. However, India actually buys more from these countries than it sells to them, creating a deficit of $209 billion, mainly because India imports a lot of oil and manufactured goods. But this isn’t necessarily bad because the new oil-rich members like Saudi Arabia and Iran give India more options for buying energy, which is very important for India’s growing economy. India also uses BRICS to create new ways of lending and borrowing money through institutions like the New Development Bank, which gives developing countries alternatives to Western-dominated banks. What’s really smart about India’s approach is that it acts like a bridge between different worlds. On one hand, India participates in Western groups and maintains good relationships with countries like America through groups like the Quad. On the other hand, it leads developing countries through BRICS. This means India doesn’t have to choose sides completely, which gives it more power and flexibility in international relations. India is particularly good at this balancing act with China and Russia within BRICS. Even though India and China have border disputes and don’t always agree, they still work together in BRICS on issues where they have common interests. Similarly, even though Russia has problems with Western countries, India maintains its relationship with Russia while also keeping good ties with the West. This shows how mature India’s foreign policy has become. The expansion of BRICS actually helps India because it means the group represents more of the world, making it harder for Western countries to ignore what BRICS wants. But expansion also creates challenges because with more members, it becomes harder to agree on things, and there’s always a risk that China might try to dominate the group or that the group might become too anti-Western, which wouldn’t suit India’s balanced approach. India’s projects with new BRICS members show how practical its approach is. For example, India is developing the Chabahar Port in Iran, which gives India another way to trade with Central Asia and Afghanistan without depending too much on Pakistan or China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This kind of project shows how India uses BRICS relationships to create real alternatives and increase its own strategic options. Looking ahead, India’s success in BRICS will depend on whether it can help all the different members work together despite their various interests and problems. India’s goal is to make BRICS a credible alternative to Western-led groups while keeping it inclusive and not anti-Western. This requires a lot of diplomatic skill, but India has shown it can handle complex relationships well. The bigger picture is that India sees BRICS as just one part of its strategy to become a major world power. India wants a world where multiple centers of power exist, not just Western dominance, and where developing countries have a real voice in global decisions. Through BRICS, India is building this multipolar world while maintaining its strategic independence and keeping all its options open. This approach reflects India’s ancient wisdom of finding balance and harmony even in complex and potentially conflicting relationships, and it’s working well for India in today’s complicated global politics.

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