India Hosts BRICS at 20, Testing a Bloc of 11 Members

India opens a milestone BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, facing the hardest test yet of cohesion in an expanded 11-member bloc.

India will host the BRICS Summit on September 12-13, marking 25 years since the term was coined and 20 years since the original BRIC grouping was formed, as Nikkei Asia reports. The meeting, held under India's presidency organised around resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability, brings together leaders of a bloc that now includes 11 full members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. According to Urban Acres, members collectively account for nearly half the world's population and a substantial share of global output and trade.

The summit lands at a moment when the bloc's divisions are plainly visible. Urban Acres reports that a BRICS foreign ministers' meeting in New Delhi in May failed to produce a joint statement because members could not agree on the conflict in West Asia, forcing India to issue only a chair's statement and outcome document. Expansion has widened the range of interests: members differ over security questions, energy priorities, monetary systems and the bloc's diplomatic role. Nikkei Asia notes analysts describe New Delhi as facing a difficult balancing act — strengthening the grouping without letting it become an instrument of Chinese influence.

Currency policy illustrates both the opportunity and the friction inside the expanded bloc. Urban Acres reports that India supports local-currency settlement and payment interoperability but not a common BRICS currency, with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal saying in August that India opposed a separate BRICS currency, and the Reserve Bank of India proposing to link members' digital currencies for cross-border trade. On the Russian side, Urban Acres quotes Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying on September 8 that Russia did not seek de-dollarisation, remained open to acceptable payment methods, and that around 90% of Russia-BRICS transactions were already conducted in national currencies.

Energy is the clearest area where competing interests converge. Urban Acres notes the expanded grouping includes Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran as major producers alongside India and China, two of the world's biggest oil consumers, with disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz capable of raising Indian energy costs and inflation. Nikkei Asia reports that energy ties are deepening amid crises. According to Urban Acres, the June BRICS Energy Ministers' Meeting discussed energy security, access and equity, and advanced cooperation on smart grids, energy storage and hydrogen technologies.

The practical test, as Urban Acres frames it, is whether BRICS can build a portfolio of workable arrangements rather than depend on consensus across every issue, starting with the proposed Action Plan for 2026-30 on global value chains, which includes a technical council and a joint study to boost intra-BRICS trade. Beyond the summit room, the same question of how India and China shape Asia is being pressed elsewhere: Singapore Management University launched its Asia Ready Conversations initiative on September 11 with businessman and author R. Gopalakrishnan, who told the inaugural dialogue that India and China will play an important role in shaping Asia's future and that future leaders must understand their development along with the history and culture shaping both countries' engagement with the region.