What BRICS Is — and Why It Matters to India

BRICS is a club of large developing and emerging economies. It is not NATO. It is not the United Nations. It is not a customs union with one tariff.

The original core was Brazil, Russia, India, China, then South Africa. From 2024 the group widened. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates came in. Indonesia joined as a full member in January 2025. Official BRICS and Indian government lists often speak of eleven members and include Saudi Arabia. Riyadh’s own status has remained ambiguous in public reporting. Treat “eleven” as the working diplomatic count, and treat Saudi membership as contested fact, not as a settled legal line.

In 2026 India holds the rotating chair. The leaders’ summit is scheduled in New Delhi on 12–13 September. That is why the grouping is not an abstract textbook item for Indian readers this month. It is a live diplomatic file.

What BRICS was built to do

The first letter was an investment acronym. Jim O’Neill at Goldman Sachs used “BRIC” in 2001 to describe large emerging markets. The governments later turned the label into a political grouping. The first BRIC summit was in 2009. South Africa’s entry produced the present name.

The practical machinery is thinner than the communiqués. Two pieces matter more than the rest:

• The New Development Bank (NDB), set up to lend for infrastructure and sustainable projects
• A contingent reserve arrangement, a limited currency-support toolkit among members

There is also a long argument about reducing reliance on the dollar in trade settlement. That is a direction of travel, not a completed system. Most cross-border trade involving BRICS countries still runs through established dollar and correspondent-bank rails. Local-currency deals exist. They are not yet “the new world monetary order.”

What BRICS is not

It is not a military alliance.
It is not a single market.
It is not a G7 with the serial numbers filed off.
It is not an anti-India China bloc — and it is not an anti-China India bloc either.

The members disagree on borders, oil, sanctions, Israel-Iran, Ukraine, and how much to confront Washington. China is the largest economy in the room by a wide margin. India is the other giant with a different security map. That tension is built into the furniture.

Why New Delhi stays in the room

India does not treat BRICS as charity and does not treat it as a China containment vehicle. It treats it as one of several tables.

Useful to India:

• A Global South stage that is not hosted in the West
• Voice in development finance via the NDB
• A place to talk to Russia, Iran, the Gulf, Africa and Southeast Asia without first asking a Western secretariat
• In 2026, the chair’s agenda-setting power: what gets into the declaration, who is invited, which words are fought over

Costly or awkward for India:

• Sharing a masthead with China while the LAC file is unresolved
• Sharing a masthead with Russia while India also needs the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia
• Expansion that adds energy heavyweights and also adds political quarrels India may not want to own
• The risk that “BRICS vs the West” rhetoric is heard in Washington as alignment, even when New Delhi insists it is multi-alignment

This is the same logic as the Malacca and LAC stories. India is trying to keep more than one theatre open. BRICS is a political theatre. The LAC is a military one. Malacca is a maritime one. They collide in the same capital.

Expansion changed the meaning

The original five were a growth story plus a revisionist Russia-China pair plus an African seat. The post-2024 map includes major energy producers and a Southeast Asian giant.

That raises the group’s weight in oil, population and headline GDP. It also raises the chance of paralysis. More members means more vetoes by consensus. Declarations get vaguer. The NDB can still lend. A joint geopolitical line on every crisis will not appear.

Partner-country tiers, announced in recent years, add another ring of states that are adjacent without full membership. Read that as influence-building, not as a new UN General Assembly.

What to watch this month

• The New Delhi summit language on Ukraine, Gaza, and “multipolarity”
• Whether India uses the chair to talk development and reform of global institutions more than anti-Western theatre
• Any move on local-currency settlement that is operational, not rhetorical
• How Beijing and Moscow brief the same event
• Whether Saudi Arabia is listed as member, invitee, or both

Related : Why the Malacca Strait Matters to India

Bottom line

BRICS matters to India because it is a cheap way to sit with a large share of the world’s population and a rising share of energy and manufacturing — without joining a military bloc. It does not settle the China problem. It does not replace the Quad, the G20, or bilateral deals with the United States.

For readers: this is an explainer ahead of a summit, not a prediction that BRICS will remake the financial system next week.

Related: LAC Explained
Related: Why the Malacca Strait Matters to India