BRICS 2026: India’s Strategy for a Multipolar World

 

By: CA  Anil K. Jain              

Chartered Accountant | Economist | Policy Researcher | Author           
President – Ahimsa Foundation India  Email: CAINDIA@HOTMAIL.COM

 

The 2026 BRICS Summit highlights India’s growing role as a balancing power in a multipolar world. India seeks stronger trade, development finance, digital payments and rupee internationalisation while avoiding an anti-Western bloc. BRICS offers strategic autonomy and Global South leadership, but internal rivalries, trade imbalances and weak implementation remain major challenges.

 

The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi marks an important moment not only for the expanding grouping but also for India’s emergence as a major balancing power in an increasingly multipolar world. Under the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability,” India has sought to steer BRICS away from becoming an overtly anti-Western alliance and towards a more pragmatic platform for economic cooperation, financial reform, technology, development and greater representation of the Global South.

The significance of this approach becomes apparent from the sheer scale of BRICS. The expanded grouping accounts for roughly 49.5 per cent of the world’s population, 40 per cent of global GDP and 26 per cent of global trade. Intra-BRICS merchandise trade has grown dramatically, from about $84 billion in 2003 to approximately $1.17 trillion in 2024. BRICS therefore possesses enormous economic weight. Yet its importance to India lies less in confronting the West than in providing New Delhi with additional diplomatic, financial and strategic options.

India’s Diplomatic Achievement

One of India’s most important achievements at the New Delhi summit was simply keeping an increasingly diverse BRICS together. The expanded grouping includes countries with very different relationships with the United States, China, Russia and one another. Reaching unanimous agreement on the New Delhi Declaration, despite major geopolitical disagreements, was consequently a significant diplomatic accomplishment.

India’s broader objective has been to demonstrate that BRICS need not become a China-Russia-led geopolitical bloc directed against the West. Instead, it can seek reform of the existing international order while promoting the interests of emerging economies.

This fits India’s longstanding concept of strategic autonomy. India participates simultaneously in BRICS alongside China and Russia, the Quad with the United States, Japan and Australia, the G20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, while maintaining strong relations with Europe and the Gulf states. Rather than choosing one geopolitical camp, India seeks productive relationships across competing centres of global power.

BRICS strengthens that strategy. It gives India another platform from which to champion the Global South, maintain its relationship with Russia, manage its difficult relationship with China and increase its negotiating leverage with Western powers.

Economic Opportunities — and a Major Warning

BRICS offers tangible economic benefits to India, particularly through the New Development Bank (NDB). By June 2026, the bank had approved around 141 projects worth approximately $44 billion. India itself has received financing for about 32 significant projects, representing roughly $9.5 billion in investment across transport, clean energy, water, sanitation and other infrastructure.

The establishment of the NDB’s India Regional Office at GIFT City in Gujarat further increases the potential importance of BRICS development finance. But expanding trade with BRICS does not automatically mean economic gains for India. This is one of the most important qualifications to the optimistic narrative surrounding the grouping.

India imports considerably more merchandise from BRICS economies than it exports to them. The source material estimates Indian merchandise exports to BRICS at around $95.7 billion against imports of approximately $321.8 billion under one calculation, producing a deficit of about $226 billion. BRICS countries account for a much larger share of India’s merchandise imports than exports.

India therefore needs to focus not merely on increasing BRICS trade, but on making that trade more balanced. Reducing non-tariff barriers, improving customs procedures, expanding market access for Indian businesses and developing stronger supply chains should be priorities.

Payments, the Rupee and the Digital Future

Perhaps the most consequential economic development within BRICS concerns payments. Rather than supporting an unrealistic attempt to create a common BRICS currency capable of replacing the dollar, India has emphasised cheaper and faster cross-border payments, greater use of national currencies and interoperability between payment systems and central-bank digital currencies.

This approach aligns closely with India’s own technological strengths.India’s Unified Payments Interface has become an enormous domestic payments network. In August 2026 alone, UPI processed approximately 24.51 billion transactions worth ₹29.82 trillion. UPI merchant acceptance has also expanded internationally, including selected locations in countries such as the UAE, Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, Mauritius, France and Sri Lanka.

The UPI-PayNow linkage between India and Singapore demonstrates how Indian payment infrastructure could facilitate real-time international transfers.

But UPI should not be confused with the Digital Rupee, or e₹. UPI is principally a payment rail that transfers money, usually between bank accounts. The Digital Rupee is sovereign currency itself in digital form, issued by the Reserve Bank of India.

The distinction creates an intriguing long-term possibility: UPI could increasingly serve as the interface while the Digital Rupee becomes one of the settlement assets operating underneath it.

BRICS could help accelerate this process through interoperable national payment systems rather than through a single supranational currency.

Internationalising the Rupee

India also has an opportunity gradually to increase the international role of the rupee. The RBI has already established Special Rupee Vostro Accounts, enabling international trade to be settled in Indian currency.

Greater rupee invoicing could reduce foreign-exchange risk for Indian companies, lower transaction costs, facilitate faster settlement and gradually reduce dependence on dollar-based financial channels. It could also strengthen GIFT City as an international financial centre.

However, internationalisation must proceed cautiously.

The experience of trade with Russia demonstrates the fundamental problem. When India imports substantially more from another country than it exports, that country accumulates rupees. Unless those rupees can be spent on Indian goods or invested in attractive Indian financial assets, large-scale rupee settlement becomes difficult.

India therefore needs deeper capital markets alongside internationalisation of its currency. A sensible strategy would be gradual: expand UPI internationally; increase bilateral local-currency trade where commercial conditions permit; connect selected central-bank digital currencies; deepen rupee capital markets; develop GIFT City; encourage rupee invoicing; expand currency-swap arrangements; and eventually construct an interoperable BRICS payments framework.

The objective should be multi-currency diversification rather than aggressive de-dollarisation. The dollar still occupies a dominant position in international finance. The source material notes that it accounted for about 57.1 per cent of disclosed global foreign-exchange reserves in the first quarter of 2026. Any movement towards a genuinely multipolar international currency system is therefore likely to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Why BRICS Should Not Become an Anti-American Alliance

BRICS can provide countries with additional bargaining power when confronted with unilateral tariffs, sanctions or other economic pressures. Members have called for reform of the IMF, World Bank and other international institutions and criticised unilateral trade and financial measures they regard as inconsistent with multilateral principles. But turning BRICS into an explicitly anti-American organisation would be contrary to India’s interests.

India has important economic, technological and strategic relationships with the United States, Europe and Japan. It should not sacrifice these relationships merely to strengthen an alternative bloc. The preferable strategy can be summarised simply: BRICS should function as insurance against excessive dependence on America, not as an alliance against America. That means India can support national-currency settlement where economically sensible, diversified supply chains, stronger multilateral institutions and greater representation for developing countries without committing itself to an anti-Western geopolitical project.

BRICS Still Has Serious Weaknesses

Despite its enormous scale, BRICS remains institutionally weak. The most important challenge is the India-China rivalry. The two countries cooperate within BRICS but simultaneously compete strategically across Asia and beyond.Other members also possess contradictory geopolitical interests. Russia’s confrontation with the West differs considerably from the priorities of India, Brazil or some Gulf countries. Expansion further complicates consensus.

BRICS also lacks the permanent institutional machinery possessed by organisations such as the European Union. It remains primarily intergovernmental, without comparable supranational institutions, common regulations or integrated economic governance. Its economic integration is similarly shallow. Even though intra-BRICS merchandise trade has reached approximately $1.17 trillion, much of that trade remains China-centric.

Expansion therefore creates a paradox: the larger BRICS becomes, the more impressive its collective economic and demographic weight becomes — but the harder it becomes to agree on how that power should actually be used.

Turning BRICS from a Forum into an Institution

For BRICS to become more effective, it must increasingly convert summit declarations into practical mechanisms. A BRICS-wide interoperable payments network could reduce cross-border transaction costs. The New Development Bank could expand local-currency lending and development finance. Customs delays and non-tariff barriers should be reduced.

There is also substantial potential for cooperation in AI, semiconductors, quantum technologies, biotechnology, space, energy security and critical minerals. Agricultural cooperation could strengthen food security, while permanent health and disease-surveillance networks could improve preparedness for future pandemics.

India’s digital public infrastructure could become particularly influential. If Indian approaches to digital payments, digital governance, health technology, agricultural technology and AI are adopted across developing economies, India could acquire something more enduring than increased exports: standards-setting power. BRICS would also benefit from a small professional secretariat and an annual scorecard measuring whether summit commitments have actually been implemented.

India as a Rule-Shaping Power

The larger significance of the New Delhi summit may ultimately extend beyond BRICS itself. The emerging world order is unlikely to consist simply of a US-led bloc confronting a China-Russia bloc. Instead, global politics is increasingly characterised by several centres of power — the United States, China, the European Union, India, Russia and influential regional and middle powers — cooperating on some issues while competing fiercely on others.

Such an international environment can work to India’s advantage. India may never dominate BRICS because of China’s enormous economic weight. But it can increasingly become the organisation’s balancing power: a country capable of engaging simultaneously with Russia, China, Iran, the Gulf states, developing countries and Western democracies.

Perhaps the most significant outcome of the New Delhi summit, therefore, is what did not happen. BRICS did not transform itself into an explicitly anti-American alliance. It did not embrace an impractical common currency designed to overthrow the dollar. Nor did it fracture under the weight of the geopolitical disagreements among its members.

Instead, India sought to direct it towards development, resilience, technology, institutional reform and practical cooperation. If the New Delhi commitments eventually produce functioning payment links, greater investment, stronger technology partnerships, expanded development finance and increased influence for emerging economies in global institutions, the 2026 summit could be remembered as an important stage in India’s transition from a balancing power to a rule-shaping power in a multipolar world.

If implementation falters, it may instead be remembered as an impressive diplomatic achievement with limited economic consequences. That distinction — between declaration and delivery — will ultimately determine not only the future effectiveness of BRICS but also how much India actually gains from the organisation.

The article draws together the document’s two major strands—the strategic significance of the 2026 BRICS summit for India and the related UPI/Digital Rupee/rupee-internationalisation strategy—while preserving its central conclusion that India benefits more from diversification and strategic autonomy than from turning BRICS into an anti-Western bloc.