Siddharth Roy
(siddharth001.roy@gmail.com)
When BRICS leaders assemble at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on September 12-13, India should resist the temptation to measure the summit by the strength of its geopolitical language. The more consequential question is narrower: can India use its BRICS chairmanship to reduce some of the economic vulnerabilities that constrain its rise?
This is where the 18th BRICS Summit acquires a distinctly Indian significance. The expanded grouping of 11 members gives India access to some of the world's largest energy producers, commodity suppliers, manufacturing economies and emerging markets. But India's objective should not be to turn that collective weight into an alternative to the West. It should be to use BRICS to make India's own economy more resilient, competitive and less exposed to concentrated dependencies.
The first priority should be China. India's economic relationship with China is defined by an uncomfortable contradiction. Bilateral trade is large, but Indian industry remains heavily dependent on Chinese machinery, components, electronics, chemicals and other intermediate goods. At the same time, strategic tensions make excessive dependence undesirable. The answer is not economic disengagement, which would impose costs on Indian manufacturers. It is de-risking through diversification.
BRICS can help India do this. Its proposed work on resilient and diversified global value chains should identify products where Indian companies face excessive dependence on a single source. Pharmaceuticals, electronics, solar equipment, batteries, semiconductors and critical minerals deserve particular attention. India should seek arrangements that give its manufacturers alternative suppliers within BRICS while retaining the freedom to apply national-security safeguards.
Critical minerals are especially important. Lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and rare earth elements are becoming as strategically important as oil once was. They underpin electric vehicles, batteries, renewable-energy systems and advanced electronics. India cannot afford to replace one form of energy dependence with another form of mineral dependence. Cooperation with BRICS resource-rich members can help India diversify supplies, develop processing capacity and build strategic reserves. India is already pursuing de-risking through multiple groupings, including BRICS and the Quad; these should be complementary rather than competing strategies.
The second major Indian interest is payments. For years, BRICS discussions about de-dollarisation have generated more headlines than economic results. India should avoid being drawn into a race to construct a new reserve currency. That would be neither realistic nor necessary.
What India needs is cheaper and faster settlement for Indian businesses. Its Unified Payments Interface has demonstrated that digital payments can dramatically reduce transaction friction at home. India is now pushing for greater interoperability among BRICS payment systems and is exploring links between central-bank digital currencies. The objective should be practical: allow an Indian exporter, tourist or small business to transact across borders without relying on a chain of expensive intermediaries.
This is particularly important for India's services economy and its millions of small enterprises. At the BRICS Trade Ministers' meeting in Jaipur, members agreed on guiding principles for MSME credit, while India pushed for greater trade in services and resilient value chains. The next step should be an actual BRICS trade-finance mechanism that helps smaller Indian exporters obtain working capital, credit guarantees and market information. Large corporations already have international banking relationships. The real test is whether a small Indian manufacturer can enter a BRICS supply chain.
The third opportunity is development finance. India needs enormous investment in transport, power, urban infrastructure, water, climate adaptation and manufacturing. The New Development Bank can become more useful if it moves beyond being another lender and becomes a catalyst for private capital. India should push for greater local-currency lending, better project preparation and mechanisms that de-risk infrastructure projects sufficiently to attract pension funds, insurers and other institutional investors.
This is where BRICS can complement rather than challenge the existing financial system. India does not need an ideological alternative to the World Bank or IMF. It needs more sources of capital and more competition among development institutions. A stronger NDB would give emerging economies another financing option without requiring them to abandon existing institutions.
Energy security should be approached similarly. India remains highly exposed to imported hydrocarbons. BRICS brings together major energy producers as well as large consumers. That creates scope for cooperation in long-term energy contracts, renewable technologies, battery storage, green hydrogen and electricity-grid resilience. The recent BRICS energy agenda has already identified critical minerals, diversified energy sources, storage and grid modernisation as priorities. India should convert those themes into investible projects.
The strategic constraint is clear. India cannot allow BRICS to become a platform dominated by an anti-Western agenda. Its economic future depends heavily on markets, capital and technology from the United States, Europe, Japan and other partners. Nor can New Delhi permit BRICS to become a vehicle for Chinese technological or financial dominance.
India's strength lies precisely in its ability to participate in multiple partnerships without allowing any one of them to define its foreign economic policy. BRICS can serve India's interests best when it complements, rather than substitutes for, its relationships with the G7, Quad, European Union and other partners.
The success of the New Delhi summit should therefore be judged against an Indian balance sheet. Are Indian exporters facing lower transaction costs? Do Indian manufacturers have more diversified sources of critical inputs? Can Indian companies access more development finance? Are MSMEs finding new markets? Is India's energy and mineral security improving?
If the answer to these questions is yes, India will have achieved something more valuable than another declaration about a changing world order. It will have used BRICS to strengthen its own capacity to compete in that changing world.
That should be the real purpose of India's BRICS presidency: not to build a bloc against someone, but to build an India that is harder to disrupt, easier to invest in and better positioned to shape the global economy.
(The author is a Consultant to Rashtriya Raksha University under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Civil engineer and a Columnist. The Views are personal. He can be reached at (siddharth001.roy@gmail.com)