BRICS in New Delhi: India’s Test of Strategic Autonomy in a Fragmenting World
As BRICS expands, India’s challenge is to turn multi-alignment into practical institutional outcomes without allowing the grouping to harden into a geopolitical bloc.
By Vikrant Srivastava
8 September 2026 | Analysis
When leaders gather in New Delhi on 12–13 September for the 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam, the meeting will carry significance beyond another diplomatic calendar event. India is chairing a BRICS that now has 11 full members, while the wider format also includes partner countries. Its 2026 presidency is organised around “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.” [1] The more consequential question is whether a larger and more diverse BRICS can translate political weight into usable cooperation.
India occupies the difficult middle
India is unusually well placed to test what BRICS can become. New Delhi maintains a longstanding strategic partnership with Russia, manages a competitive and still unsettled relationship with China, and at the same time works closely with the United States, Japan and other Indo-Pacific and European partners. That combination is often described as strategic autonomy. The harder test in 2026 is whether strategic autonomy can produce institutions and outcomes, rather than merely diplomatic room for manoeuvre.
For India, BRICS is therefore most useful neither as an anti-Western coalition nor as a vehicle for any single member’s geopolitical project. Its value lies in widening India’s options and in creating negotiating space for countries that want greater influence over global rules without being forced into a binary choice between rival power centres.
The China question sits quietly at the centre
The summit may also become an important test of the fragile India–China stabilisation. Reuters reported on 24 August that President Xi Jinping was likely to attend, which would make it his first visit to India in seven years, although Beijing had not formally confirmed the trip in that reporting. The disputed Himalayan boundary remains unresolved, and India continues to link wider bilateral normalisation to peace along the border. [2]
This makes India’s approach to China especially revealing. Days before the summit, Reuters reported that New Delhi had stalled a proposal to link India’s Unified Payments Interface with Alipay+ because of national-security, political and data-governance concerns. [3] The episode captures a central feature of India’s BRICS policy: cooperation does not require strategic trust. India can work with China inside BRICS while retaining hard boundaries where security, technology or data are concerned.
Watch payments, not the rhetoric of a “BRICS currency”
One of the more concrete economic developments is occurring below the level of grand geopolitical rhetoric. Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra said in August that BRICS members were discussing possible links among fast-payment systems and central-bank digital currencies. He explicitly described the ideas as being at the discussion stage, while also reiterating India’s effort to promote greater use of the rupee and local currencies in cross-border trade. [4]
That distinction matters. The realistic near-term story is not the sudden replacement of the dollar by a single BRICS currency. It is the gradual construction of additional payment rails, settlement arrangements and currency options that can lower transaction costs and reduce dependence on any one channel. For India, such pluralism is strategically more attractive than merely exchanging dollar dependence for greater dependence on the Chinese renminbi.
India–Russia trade already illustrates part of this shift. On 2 September, the head of Sberbank in India told Reuters that rouble- and rupee-based infrastructure now accounts for 96% of bilateral trade settlements. That figure should be read as a statement from a senior Russian banker, not as an independently verified Indian government statistic, but it nonetheless shows how quickly alternative settlement mechanisms can become commercially significant when geopolitical pressure creates an incentive. [5]
Expansion gives BRICS weight, and a coordination problem
BRICS now brings together 11 full members spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The grouping operates by consensus. [6] This produces an unavoidable paradox: every expansion increases BRICS’s representational and economic weight, but also makes common positions harder to negotiate. Its members do not share identical security interests, economic models or relationships with the United States, China or Russia.
That does not make BRICS irrelevant. It suggests that its most durable influence may come from selective coordination rather than bloc discipline: development finance, payment connectivity, technology governance, climate and resilience cooperation, and reform of institutions whose structures still reflect an earlier distribution of global power.
India has already placed reform of global governance and the multilateral system prominently within its 2026 BRICS diplomacy. The May foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi included a dedicated session on that subject, and its chair’s outcome document reaffirmed the group’s commitment to strengthening BRICS cooperation across political-security, economic-financial and people-to-people pillars. [7]
India’s real test
The New Delhi summit therefore matters less as a referendum on whether India is moving “towards” Russia and China or “away” from the West. That framing misunderstands the central logic of Indian strategy. The more important question is whether India can help build a BRICS that expands room for manoeuvre without becoming another rigid bloc.
A successful Indian presidency would favour practical interoperability over ideological alignment: cheaper and safer cross-border payments rather than premature currency symbolism; credible development cooperation rather than broad declarations; and multilateral reform that gives developing countries greater voice without replacing one hierarchy with another.
If New Delhi can move BRICS in that direction, India’s achievement will not be choosing a side in a fragmenting world. It will be demonstrating that strategic autonomy can become a form of institutional leadership.
Source Verification
Fact-checked against sources available on 8 September 2026. Analytical conclusions are the author’s interpretation; factual claims below were checked against the cited material.
[1] Akashvani / News On AIR, Government of India, “India to host 18th BRICS Summit on Sept 12 & 13 in New Delhi,” 27 August 2026. Confirms summit dates, Bharat Mandapam venue, India’s theme, and 350+ engagements across 25+ cities. Open source
[2] Reuters, “China’s Xi likely to visit India with big delegation for first time in seven years,” 24 August 2026. Reports Xi as likely to attend, not formally confirmed; notes first India visit in seven years and continuing border sensitivities. Open source
[3] Reuters, “India stalls Alipay+ payments link over security, data concerns, sources say,” 3 September 2026. Open source
[4] Reuters, “BRICS nations discuss linking payment systems and CBDCs, RBI chief says,” 11 August 2026. Confirms that payment-system/CBDC linkages remain under discussion and that RBI is promoting greater use of local currencies. Open source
[5] Reuters, “Russia says no more hurdles in payments with India,” 2 September 2026. Attributes the 96% local-currency settlement figure to Ivan Nosov, head of Sberbank in India. Open source
[6] Official BRICS Brazil presidency, “About the BRICS.” Confirms 11 full members and consensus-based decision-making among members. Open source
[7] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, “Chair’s Statement and Outcome Document at BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting,” 15 May 2026; and MEA records of the dedicated session on reform of global governance and the multilateral system. Open source
Precision note
As of the sources checked on 8 September 2026, the summit itself is officially confirmed for 12–13 September in New Delhi. Xi Jinping’s attendance is reported as likely/expected but should not be described as formally confirmed unless a newer official announcement is issued. Likewise, BRICS payment-system and CBDC linkages are proposals under discussion, not an implemented common system.
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