BRICS at crossroads: India’s big Test

When BRICS leaders gather in New Delhi in September 2026 for the 18th BRICS Summit, they will meet at a moment when the international order is undergoing profound transformation. India is chairing BRICS in 2026 under the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability", at a time marked by wars, geopolitical rivalries, economic fragmentation and growing questions about the effectiveness of institutions created after the Second World War. The summit is therefore not merely another item on the diplomatic calendar. It comes at a moment when the balance of global power itself is being contested.

BRICS has also changed dramatically since its formation by Brazil, Russia, India and China, with South Africa joining in 2011. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE joined the expanded grouping in 2024, while Indonesia formally became a full member in January 2025. Saudi Arabia was also invited to join in the 2023 expansion, and BRICS institutional documents currently list it among the 11 members. Yet there is an important qualification: the Saudi government has continued to describe its participation in BRICS meetings as that of an "invited country", leaving some ambiguity over its formal status. This expansion has nevertheless given BRICS a much wider geographical and economic reach, bringing together major powers and emerging economies from Asia, Africa, West Asia and Latin America. BRICS has become larger, more geographically representative and more influential, but also more internally diverse and difficult to coordinate.

The UN remains the world's most universal multilateral institution. Yet when it comes to preventing or ending major armed conflicts, its record exposes serious structural limitations. Gaza provides one of the clearest recent examples. The Security Council has repeatedly been divided over ceasefire and humanitarian resolutions. In June 2025, the US vetoed a draft resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza despite the other 14 members voting in favour. In September that year, another Gaza ceasefire resolution was again vetoed by the US. The problem extends beyond Gaza. Sudan has remained engulfed in a devastating conflict despite repeated international diplomatic efforts. Syria's prolonged war demonstrated for years how divisions among powerful states could prevent the Security Council from producing a unified response.

Even when the UN passes resolutions, its ability to ensure implementation often depends upon the political will of individual states. The Security Council's veto structure lies at the heart of this problem. Five permanent members — the US, Russia, China, France and the UK — possess the power to block substantive decisions. The veto was originally conceived as a mechanism to ensure that the major powers remained part of the collective-security system. In practice, however, it can also become an instrument of paralysis when those powers disagree.

The UN's own record illustrates this problem. In 2025, the Security Council adopted 44 resolutions but failed to adopt four draft resolutions; two of those failures resulted from vetoes, both concerning West Asia. The previous year saw eight draft resolutions fail to pass amid seven vetoes. The issue, therefore, is not that the UN has become irrelevant. Rather, the institution created to manage international peace and security is increasingly constrained by the very great-power politics that it was designed to manage. Its structure also continues to reflect the balance of power of 1945 rather than the geopolitical realities of 2026.

This crisis of multilateralism creates space for other forums to acquire greater significance. The BRICS grouping brings together major energy producers, enormous consumer markets, rapidly developing economies and countries with significant demographic, technological and political capabilities. Perhaps more significant is the fact that BRICS brings together countries whose national and regional interests do not converge. Iran and Saudi Arabia are a striking example. For decades, Tehran and Riyadh were major rivals competing for influence across West Asia, backing opposing sides in regional conflicts. Their diplomatic rapprochement in 2023, facilitated by China, reduced tensions but did not erase underlying strategic differences. Yet both were brought into the expanded BRICS framework.

This makes BRICS unusual. It is not built around a single ideology, political system or foreign-policy doctrine. India and China remain strategic competitors; Iran and the Gulf states have their own regional tensions; Russia has a fundamentally different relationship with the West; and countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE maintain extensive economic and strategic relationships with Western powers. Yet these states have still found areas in which they can cooperate.

One of the most important dimensions of BRICS cooperation is financial. Much of the discussion has focused on the possibility of a common BRICS currency, but the more realistic transformation may be the gradual development of alternatives to dollar-dependent transactions. A common currency would require a degree of economic and monetary integration that BRICS does not currently possess. The economies of Brazil, India, China, Russia, Iran and the Gulf states differ substantially in their monetary policies, financial systems and economic structures.

A more practical path is the expansion of local-currency trade, alternative payment mechanisms and digital financial infrastructure. RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra recently said BRICS countries are discussing the possible integration of fast-payment systems and central-bank digital currencies to make cross-border payments faster and cheaper. India is also promoting the internationalisation of the rupee and greater use of local currencies in international transactions. Such developments do not mean the dollar will suddenly lose its global position. But they could gradually create a financial environment in which countries have more choices. The challenge to dollar dominance may therefore come not from one new BRICS currency replacing it, but from the emergence of a wider ecosystem of currencies, payment systems and financial institutions.

The New Development Bank is another part of this process, providing an additional source of development finance for infrastructure and sustainable-development projects. India's interest is better expressed through multipolarity: a world with several centres of economic, political and technological power, where countries retain greater freedom to make independent choices. As India hosts the New Delhi Summit, its challenge is to show that a more multipolar world can also be a more cooperative one.

Akhilesh Kumar is a PhD Research Scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and an Independent Writer