BRICS has become harder for India to ignore—and harder to manage. Its expansion has brought together a wider range of emerging economies, but also sharper strategic differences. The New Delhi summit produced a joint declaration, yet the deeper question remains: what can India realistically achieve through a grouping where consensus is increasingly difficult?
BRICS as a Strategic Constraint for India
“India’s interest lies in sabotaging BRICS to the extent it can, lest China turn it into a juggernaut that flattens Indian interests.”
Rajesh Rajagopalan, ThePrint, 11 September 2026.
“What should India do to enhance our future? Forget BRICS. Our future is as a global partner of the West—Europe and the US.”
Surjit S. Bhalla, The Indian Express, 11 September 2026.
“Organisations like the APEC, BRICS, EU, G7 and NATO don’t shape the world order. They operate within the parameters set by great-power politics … With the BRICS party over in Delhi, the Indian foreign policy elite needs to wake up from its self-indulgent reverie and pay attention to the changing global distribution of power and the geopolitical realignment between America, China, and Russia.”
C. Raja Mohan, The Indian Express, 16 September 2026.
BRICS as a Strategic Utility for India
“ BRICS is useful for hedging, and for keeping adversaries close, especially when friends are acting up. It is a messaging platform and a pressure group which brings leaders with very different views into the same room, where some of those differences get talked through, if not resolved.”
Happymon Jacob, Hindustan Times, 14 September 2026.
“The proposition that India does not need BRICS and is sufficiently insured by its good relations with the West is a fallacy. India needs all sides, and needs to take a leaf out of the Chinese playbook by maximising advantage from all relationships.”
Pankaj Saran, The Times of India, 11 September 2026.
“BRICS matters to India not because it promises a replacement world order, but because it helps withstand any single power or coalition from monopolising the existing one. In an age of unstable multipolarity, it gives India additional room for manoeuvre.”
Nirupama Menon Roy, India’s World, 16 September 2026.
“BRICS is now too big to either ignore or fail”
Mohan Kumar, The Hindu, 12 September 2026.
Making an Expanded BRICS Work
“The 2026 Summit in Delhi provides an opportunity for course correction, and India has worked hard to persuade the new members to overcome their political differences. In a world in flux, India has to revive the original raison d’être of BRICS and shape the expanded grouping into a vehicle for reform and stability, while stopping others from hijacking it.”
T. S. Tirumurti, The Hindu, 8 September 2026.
“We’re not a satellite state of China or Russia. We will play our own role with our own distinctive voice and our own distinctive interests to protect.”
Shashi Tharoor, Firstpost, 11 September 2026.
“BRICS countries offer an excellent opportunity for developing alternative supply chains, and India should take advantage of this, both within BRICS and in the Global South.”
Dammu Ravi, The Week, 20 September 2026.
