Nirvaan Pandit, Stanford University
The term “BRIC” was inconspicuously coined in a 2001 Goldman Sachs publication as a tidy acronym for emerging market optimism—a signal to investors that Brazil, Russia, India, and China presented an opportunity for the West. But what began as a market thesis has since evolved into the ten-member “BRICS+,” a coalition that seeks to reshape the global system itself. In the wake of financial crises, shifting commodity cycles, and a growing disaffection with Western domination, BRICS+ casts itself as an alternative world order complete with its own development bank, alternative trade channels, and rival currency ambitions.
But beneath the unified rhetoric, divergent intentions reveal a unique dilemma. For countries like Egypt and Indonesia, BRICS+ offers clear incentives—alleviating critical debt, liberalizing financing, and revitalizing trade. For seminal members like China and Russia, the club is an explicit anti-West counterweight to its West-hand twin, the G7. But for India, notoriously defined by non-alignment, BRICS+ presents an identity crisis: the Balancing between courting Lady Liberty and spearheading a coalition seeking to redefine the global order.
India’s involvement with BRICS+ is grounded in principle: as a post‑colonial democracy historically underrepresented in decision‑making bodies like the UNSC and IMF, India has long championed global governance reform. With a GDP of $3.55 trillion and growth outpacing the 15 largest economies, India is the world’s fourth‑largest economy, yet its voting power in international institutions lags behind its Western counterparts. This disparity is emblematic of a broader pattern among emerging economies, positioning India—the most diplomatically “networked” of the Global South—as an archetypal ambassador. Prime Minister Modi has been direct—India must be involved in the “decision-making structures” that shape the international order.
Indeed, India’s position typifies the larger rising global dissatisfaction towards a system largely designed by and for the West. This is visible in the IMF’s trillions in lending capacity and World Bank’s billions in annual commitments, along with the dollar’s entrenched dominance granting Washington outsized influence over global capital flows and sanctions regimes. BRICS+ seeks to recalibrate these privileges through a multipolar order, yet the grouping’s own institutions—the New Development Bank and Contingent Reserve Arrangement—remain undercapitalized, underutilized, and dollar-tethered. This has left summits largely theatrical and produced, for now, more shared grievance against Western hegemony than concrete institutional reform.
Still, BRICS+ offers India and other nations real opportunities. The bloc represents over 40% of the global population and 25% of global GDP. Intra-bloc trade has outpaced BRICS-G7 trade, and the inclusion of energy-rich countries like the UAE can strengthen India’s energy security—critical for a country importing over 88% of its oil. As BRICS+ expands its focus on infrastructure, finance, and energy cooperation, India’s rising urbanization and unparalleled young population stand to benefit. Just as importantly, the bloc’s emphasis on development lending and local-currency trade supports India’s ambitions to internationalize the rupee and reduce dollar dependence.
Yet New Delhi’s position is not without its contradictions. At home, its financial architecture remains ill-suited for BRICS+ leadership. The Reserve Bank of India’s capital controls, though historically stable, now runs against the demands of a globally integrated financial system. With USD/INR covered‐interest‐parity gaps virtually closed, Indian rates are de facto tied to global (i.e. US) benchmarks. This intensifies India’s impossible trilemma between independent monetary policy, exchange-rate management, and capital mobility, undercutting BRICS+’s case for a decoupled financial regime. Simultaneously, India’s tightening on foreign portfolio flows and repatriation hurdles has deterred global capital, with domestic credit concentrated in a handful of private lenders (chiefly HDFC Bank) whose outsized role—state-bank responsibilities without sovereign backing—magnifies systemic risk and disincentivises any BRICS+ pooled-liquidity or joint-bond proposals. Finally, India’s import-substitution strategy—spearheaded by the Make In India initiative—has fallen short of ambitions. Manufacturing’s GDP share remains stagnant at 15%, sectoral employment has halved since 2016, and its growth and job-creation targets have gone unmet. These domestic policy frictions—including India’s own dismissal of BRICS+’s alternative payment systems—may cushion New Delhi in periods of volatility, but ultimately limit its capacity to experience, model, and lead the economic integration and reform BRICS+ was designed for.
India’s capacity to advance BRICS+ extends beyond domestic governance. China alone accounts for 70% of BRICS+’s total GDP, and has increasingly used its dominance to steer the coalition into an anti-West bloc that clashes with members’ interests. At the 2023 summit, for instance, Beijing pushed for Iran’s admission despite resistance by more ‘West-aligned’ states like Brazil and India. India’s own fraught relationship with China, marked by unresolved border clashes and mutual distrust, evinces the continued misalignment between the Asian giants. Economically, India’s “border before broader” doctrine versus China’s “broader before border” approach reveals divergent strategic visions over trade settlements. When paired with geopolitically opposing conditions between members like Iran and the UAE, the bloc’s internal compass runs erratically. Most importantly, these frictions have bred undeniable opportunistic gains for individual members, such as Brazil’s agricultural export boon amid the current US-China trade war.
This heterogeneity—across regime types, economic systems, trade incentives, and politics—has made unified action within BRICS+ difficult. Diplomatically, this is evident in the bloc’s reluctance to function as a pre-negotiation alliance within the G20; members have opted to pursue reform from within Western-led systems rather than position BRICS+ as a cohesive counterpoint to groups like the G7. BRICS+’s financial initiatives have suffered from a similar lack of consensus. With these internal divisions and divergent visions, BRICS+ may become a vehicle for advancing individual interests rather than a platform for shared global leadership.
Beyond internal asymmetries lies the elephant in the room—revived American hegemony—that wields significant control over BRICS+ dynamics. Recent headlines have been littered with tariff threats on BRICS+ nations over their proposed currency cooperation, along with ‘personalized’ tariffs pressuring countries to conform to America’s renewed economic vision. Most recently, Washington pressed India to isolate China in exchange for easing tariffs—a move India embraced for short-term relief but one its coupled industrial ecosystem cannot afford. Though likely brinkmanship, these moves threaten India’s diplomatic equilibrium and, by extension, the stability of BRICS+. As the U.S. remains India’s top trading partner and scheduled Quad initiatives underscore continued Indo-Pacific interests, a resurgence of U.S. protectionism could constrain India’s ability to maintain nonalignment and force an expensive choice over the Global South’s future.
BRICS+, as it stands, reflects the fractured ambitions of a world in transition—one caught between a disfavored unipolar order and an unformed multipolar alternative. India has the unique opportunity to remedy this: its geographic centrality and global credibility position it as an axis of alignment between East and West. While evidently much lies outside its control, the levers India does command could help transform BRICS+ from symbolic to actionable. India must move from presence to influence by revising itself to lead, following through on institutional reforms and ensuring initiatives materialize beyond communiqués. At the same time, it must champion the resistance of ideological polarization pulling the bloc in competing directions. The task ahead is not to pick sides, but to lead toward mutually beneficial outcomes. BRICS+ is a platform, and India needs to choose whether it remains its appendage or architect.