In New Delhi, BRICS Makes Its Boldest Case for a Multipolar World

New Delhi opened its doors this weekend to a constellation of global leaders as the BRICS bloc gathered for its annual summit, putting the sprawling Indian capital at the center of a rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were among the heads of state who arrived for two days of talks, joined by their counterparts from Brazil and South Africa as well as the bloc’s newest members — the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia. The scene outside Hyderabad House, the historic venue chosen for the summit, was one of tight security and restless anticipation: armored limousines rolling through rain-soaked avenues, flags of member states snapping in the wind, and scores of international correspondents staking out every entrance. But behind the logistical theater lay a serious purpose. For the leaders assembled, this weekend’s meeting was an opportunity to present a united front against a Western-led order they believe has long outlived its usefulness. What began nearly two decades ago as a loose grouping of fast-growing economies has matured into a bloc representing close to half of the world’s population and a formidable share of its economic output. And while the member countries differ dramatically in political systems, ambitions and even mutual rivalries, the message emanating from New Delhi was strikingly consistent: the Global South no longer intends to wait for permission to shape the global agenda. For host India, the gathering was also a quiet diplomatic triumph — a chance to project New Delhi’s growing influence as a bridge between the West and the developing world. The challenges facing the summit were as numerous as the flags on display, but so, too, was the sense of momentum. From the opening session, the tone was clear: friendly, firm and quietly defiant, with the word “multipolarity” echoing through corridors and press conferences like a talisman against the certainties of a previous era.

Understanding why the summit mattered requires a look back at where BRICS came from, and how far it has traveled. The term was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, an economist at Goldman Sachs, who used it to describe a cluster of emerging economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China — expected to dominate the global economy by mid-century. It was an investment thesis, not a political program. The grouping only took institutional shape in 2009, when the four founding members held their first formal meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia. South Africa was welcomed a year later, and with that, the acronym BRICS — broadened to include the “S” for the African nation — began to acquire political weight. But for much of its first decade, the group existed more as a statement of shared frustration than as an active engine of change. Its members were weary of the postwar architecture: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, they argued, were dominated by Western shareholders; the G7, they noted, largely ignored the interests of the developing world; and the U.N. Security Council, they insisted, no longer reflected twenty-first-century realities. Frustration alone, however, does not build an alliance. What transformed BRICS from a talking shop into a credible alternative was a combination of economic muscle and strategic need. China’s rise supplied the engine. Russia’s confrontation with the West supplied the urgency. And India’s growing confidence supplied the diplomatic heft. It also helped that the bloc created its own institutions, most notably the New Development Bank, established in 2014 with the aim of funding infrastructure and sustainable development projects across emerging economies — a response to the perceived lending conditions of Western-backed institutions. In the past two years alone, the organization has welcomed a new wave of members, from the oil-rich Gulf to the highlands of Ethiopia, and dozens of other countries have expressed interest in joining — proof, its defenders say, that BRICS addresses a real longing in the developing world. By the time the summit season returned to New Delhi this weekend, the club was no longer a curiosity. It was a fixture, and its members had arguably become the most vocal advocates for a genuine redistribution of power in global governance.

Beneath the summit’s grand statements, the actual work was dense and specific, touching on issues that will determine whether BRICS can move beyond symbolism. Topping the agenda was the question of payments. For years, member states have chafed at the dominance of the dollar in international trade, a dependency that leaves them exposed to what they view as politically motivated sanctions and the whims of U.S. monetary policy. In New Delhi, officials discussed in concrete terms how to increase the use of local currencies in bilateral trade — a shift that would reduce the bloc’s vulnerability to Washington and, proponents argue, make the global financial system more stable. The discussion went beyond rhetoric: the leaders’ declaration was expected to include commitments to expand currency swap arrangements and to develop a clearer framework for alternative payment mechanisms, even as a fully fledged common BRICS currency was pushed into the distant future as a long-term ambition rather than a near-term project. Alongside financial reform sat a crowded agenda of cooperation in energy, food security, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and, perhaps most significantly, the expansion of the New Development Bank’s lending in local currencies. The bank, often described as BRICS’s answer to the World Bank, has quietly financed projects from solar parks in South Africa to highway networks in Brazil, and summit organizers signaled that a new funding round would prioritize green infrastructure and digital connectivity. Another major theme was global governance — a diplomatic catchall covering U.N. Security Council reform, the reorganization of IMF voting shares, and the creation of space for the Global South in institutions built for an earlier era. India, which has lobbied for years for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, made clear that the sovereignty and representation of developing nations were inseparable from the summit’s broader vision of a more just international system. And hovering over every session was the deepening concern about fragmentation. As one senior diplomat involved in the negotiations put it, BRICS is not seeking to tear down the existing order so much as to open it up. Yet the conversation in New Delhi reflected a growing impatience with the pace of change.

For all the unity on display, the summit also laid bare the intricate rivalries and diverging interests that run through the bloc. No gathering of this kind is ever simple, and the New Delhi meeting was no exception. As host, Modi found himself playing a delicate game of balance. India has deepened its strategic partnership with the United States in recent years, joining the Quad group alongside Washington, Tokyo and Canberra to counter Chinese influence across the Indo-Pacific. Yet New Delhi has simultaneously embraced BRICS as a platform to assert its leadership of the developing world and to keep channels open with Beijing and Moscow. It is a high-wire act that requires constant calibration. For Putin, the summit carried a different kind of symbolism: it was a demonstration that Russia, ostracized by much of the West over its invasion of Ukraine, is far from isolated. The Russian leader’s presence in New Delhi was, in itself, a diplomatic victory of sorts — an image of him seated alongside India’s prime minister and China’s president under the spotlights of the world’s press, a tableau that Moscow hopes will be seen by audiences at home and abroad as proof of Russia’s enduring relevance in a new global order. China’s Xi, meanwhile, arrived as the bloc’s undisputed economic heavyweight, the largest trading partner of most members and the engine behind dozens of infrastructure projects across Africa and Asia. But Beijing’s dominance is both a resource and a source of unease. Smaller members worry openly about becoming overly dependent on Chinese capital and about the debt pressures that can accompany it. The unease is compounded by the bloc’s newest members, who bring their own conflicts — none more delicate than the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two historical adversaries now seated at the same table. None of this escaped the notice of Western capitals, where official statements emphasized BRICS’s internal friction and questioned its coherence. But analysts say the very fact that such disparate nations continue to show up, year after year, is itself a signal that the bloc’s utility outweighs its contradictions.

Beyond the walls of the summit venue, the wider meaning of the New Delhi gathering was already being debated in think tanks and chancelleries around the world. For Washington, BRICS has long been a source of quiet concern, although U.S. officials have taken care not to treat the grouping as a direct adversary. The American posture, echoed by European allies, holds that the bloc is too divided to act as a true counterweight and that its members remain deeply enmeshed in Western financial markets. But the arithmetic complicates that view. Together, BRICS countries account for a growing share of global output, trade and energy production. They also represent something less tangible but just as powerful: a political mood. In Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, a new generation of leaders has grown tired of being lectured on values by former colonial powers and of watching decisions that shape their economies — from interest rates to sanctions — made in distant capitals. BRICS offers those countries a tent, and membership has become a badge of prestige. The summit’s expansion is a testament to that appeal. Since the first round of enlargement in 2023, dozens of nations have submitted formal bids to join, and the waiting list reads like a map of the developing world. But expansion also raises the stakes and raises the question of what exactly BRICS wants to be. To some scholars, it is the most credible political expression yet of a multipolar world; to its critics, it is an arena of competing hegemonies that will eventually struggle to agree on its own agenda. Both readings contain elements of truth. In New Delhi, the differences were visible in every session and every communiqué, but so was the determination to keep the project moving. As one African delegate said during a break in the talks, “We are not naive about the difficulties. But for us, BRICS is the only table where everyone has to listen.”

As the summit drew to a close and the last motorcades departed New Delhi, the most enduring image may have been not a declaration or a photograph, but the simple fact of the gathering itself. A generation ago, a meeting of this kind — with Russia, China and India on one side of the table, joined by a cast of rising powers from the Gulf, Africa and Asia — would have been unthinkable outside the framework of the Western alliance. Today, it is routine. The question that lingers after the final communiqué is not whether BRICS will continue to exist, but what its existence means for the rest of the century. The bloc’s genuine achievements are still modest. It does not yet have a single currency, a common market or even a permanent secretariat. Its members trade far more heavily with China than with one another, and their economies remain deeply intertwined with the dollar-based system they criticize. The New Development Bank, while useful, lends a small fraction of what the World Bank does. And internal rivalries will not dissolve with a handshake or a summit pledge. Yet the trend line is hard to dismiss. Each year, the perimeter of the developed world shrinks a little further. Each year, a larger share of humanity carries a passport that does not match the membership of the G7. The leaders who sat down together this weekend represent not just governments but an argument — that the institutions of the twentieth century cannot simply be transplanted into the twenty-first, and that the world’s most populous and fastest-growing nations deserve a place at the table where the rules are written. That argument will unfold incrementally, through currency swaps, infrastructure loans, academic exchanges and diplomatic rounds like the one that just concluded. But the direction is clear. New Delhi, this weekend, was more than a host of a summit. It was a window onto a world being rearranged — a world in which the West remains indispensable, yet no longer dominant, and in which the gravitational center of global power has decisively shifted toward the East and the South. The BRICS meeting has ended, but the conversation it represents has only just begun.