It’s Time To Build BRICS Better

Context: The BRICS grouping succeeded up to a point, but it now confronts multiple challenges.

Achievements of BRICS

• Regular meetings in an era of complex geopolitics: Held dozens of meetings and summits, even as China’s aggression in eastern Ladakh last year brought India-China relations to their lowest point in several decades.
• A bridge between the Global North and Global South: It developed a common perspective on a wide range of global and regional issues.
• An alternative to Bretton Woods institutions: Established New Development Bank and created a financial stability net in the form of Contingency Reserve Arrangement and 
• Role in pandemic management: On the verge of setting up a Vaccine Research and Development Virtual Center.

Priorities to look into in the upcoming 13th BRICS summit

• Pursue reform of multilateral institutions: Ranging from United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund to World Trade Organization and World Health Organization.
• Resolve to combat terrorism: Tragic developments in Afghanistan have helped to focus attention sharply on this overarching theme, stressing the need to bridge the gap between rhetoric and action.
• BRICS Counter-Terrorism Action Plan contains specific measures to fight radicalisation, terrorist financing and misuse of the internet by terrorist groups, shall see the light in the present context.
• Promoting technological and digital solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals: Digital tools have helped a world adversely hit by the pandemic, and India has been at the forefront of using new technological tools to improve governance.
• Expanding people-to-people cooperation: Amidst pandemic, enhancing people-to-people cooperation will have to wait for international travel to revive.
• Deepening trade and investment ties: The challenge is China’s centrality and dominance of intra-BRICS trade flows.

Challenges ahead

• China’s economic rise has created a serious imbalance within BRICS.
• India-China confrontations: Beijing’s aggressive policy, especially against India, puts BRICS solidarity under exceptional strain.
• Limited ambit: BRICS countries have not done enough to assist the Global South to win their optimal support for their agenda.

Conclusion: The five-power combine has succeeded, albeit up to a point. But it now confronts multiple challenges and needs to master the art of brevity and tight drafting.