BRICS+ Coordination

From BRIC to BRICS+: The Architectural Frame

BRICS originated as an investment-bank acronym coined by Jim O'Neill at Goldman Sachs in 2001, was operationalized as a foreign-ministers' format at the UN General Assembly in September 2006, and held its first leaders' summit at Yekaterinburg on 16 June 2009. South Africa joined at the Sanya Summit on 14 April 2011, fixing the five-member configuration that endured until 2024. At the XV Summit in Johannesburg (22–24 August 2023), the leaders issued the Johannesburg II Declaration inviting Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to join from 1 January 2024 — the formal birth of BRICS+. Argentina, under President Javier Milei, declined by letter on 29 December 2023; Saudi Arabia has neither accepted nor formally rejected. Indonesia joined as a full member on 6 January 2025 under Brazil's chairship.

India's institutional anchor inside BRICS sits in the MEA's Economic Relations (ER) Division for sherpa-track financial and trade work, and in the Multilateral Economic Relations Division for summit drafting. The Indian sherpa — typically a Secretary (ER) or Secretary (Economic Relations) — coordinates with the sous-sherpa from the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance. The New Development Bank (NDB), headquartered in Shanghai and established by the Fortaleza Agreement of 15 July 2014, is India's principal institutional investment in the grouping; K.V. Kamath served as inaugural president (2015–2020), and India committed USD 2 billion in paid-in capital toward the NDB's USD 50 billion initial subscribed capital.

India's Coordination Logic

India treats BRICS as a balancing instrument, not a bloc. Three operating principles recur in MEA signaling. First, BRICS must not become anti-Western: Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar stated at the Kazan Summit press briefing on 23 October 2024 that BRICS is "non-Western, not anti-Western," a formulation he repeated at the Rio Summit on 6–7 July 2025. Second, expansion must follow consensus criteria. India, alongside Brazil, insisted at Johannesburg on the "Guiding Principles, Standards, Criteria and Procedures of the BRICS Partner Country Model" adopted at Kazan in October 2024, which created a partner-country tier (Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan announced January 2025) below full membership. Third, de-dollarization rhetoric is treated with caution: Jaishankar told parliament on 3 December 2024 that India has "no interest in weakening the dollar" and that no BRICS common currency proposal is under active Indian consideration, distancing Delhi from President Lula's January 2023 proposal and President Putin's Kazan symbolic banknote display.

The China factor structures every Indian position. After the Galwan clash of 15 June 2020, India used BRICS to maintain a channel with Beijing while Line of Actual Control disengagement negotiations proceeded. The Modi–Xi bilateral on the BRICS sidelines at Kazan on 23 October 2024 — the first structured meeting since 2019 — followed the 21 October 2024 patrolling agreement on Demchok and Depsang. Read MEA readouts for this sequencing: BRICS summits serve as cover for India–China stabilization that Delhi cannot stage bilaterally without domestic political cost.

On payments infrastructure, India backs the BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative (BCBPI) endorsed at Kazan but resists SWIFT-replacement framings. The Reserve Bank of India's UPI internationalization — live in UAE (2023), Sri Lanka and Mauritius (February 2024), and France (2024) — is India's preferred channel, not a BRICS rail. When reading PMO statements, separate the multilateral declaratory text (often maximalist) from the Indian national statement (consistently narrower).

Decoding Indian BRICS Signals

Indian BRICS positions are transmitted through a predictable document hierarchy. The PMO issues the Prime Minister's intervention text within 90 minutes of plenary delivery, archived at pmindia.gov.in under "Speeches." The MEA Spokesperson — Randhir Jaiswal since 15 January 2024 — holds a sherpa-level technical briefing in the 48 hours before each summit, transcripts published at mea.gov.in under "Media Briefings." The joint declaration follows summit close. Indian dissent is signaled by three techniques: footnotes (rare), omission from the national statement (common), and post-summit "clarifications" by the MEA Spokesperson (most common).

Track four substantive files. First, expansion governance: India successfully blocked Pakistan's inclusion as a partner country at Kazan, and Indian officials briefed Indian Express (25 October 2024) and The Hindu (24 October 2024) on the veto. Second, terrorism language: the post-Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025 produced sharpened Indian drafting for the Rio Declaration of 7 July 2025, paragraph 34 of which condemned the Pahalgam attack by name — a diplomatic win Delhi flagged in the MEA briefing of 8 July 2025. Third, UN Security Council reform: BRICS declarations since Fortaleza 2014 have endorsed "comprehensive reform of the UN, including its Security Council," but Chinese drafting has consistently prevented explicit endorsement of Indian, Brazilian, or South African permanent seats. Read paragraph carefully — "aspirations of Brazil, India and South Africa to play a greater role" (Kazan paragraph 7) is weaker than the G4 formulation India seeks. Fourth, NDB lending: track Indian project pipelines. As of FY2024, India was the largest borrower from the NDB with approximately USD 7.6 billion in approved loans, concentrated in renewable energy and urban transport.

What to Watch Next

Three near-term signals will indicate Indian recalibration. (1) Indian participation in BRICS Pay pilot transactions — RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra's statements after the 7–8 December 2025 RBI monetary policy committee will be diagnostic. (2) The 2026 BRICS chairship rotates to India for the third time (after 2012 Delhi and 2016 Goa); the announced summit theme and invited partner countries will reveal Delhi's expansion appetite. (3) Saudi Arabia's membership decision: continued Saudi non-decision through 2026 favors India, which prefers a smaller, more cohesive grouping where its agenda-setting weight is higher. When the MEA refers to BRICS as a "plurilateral platform" rather than a "strategic grouping" — language Jaishankar used at the IISS Manama Dialogue on 7 December 2024 — read this as deliberate downgrading relative to Quad framings, where "strategic" is consistently deployed.