When the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, and China first met in Yekaterinburg in 2009, the acronym “BRIC” was still fresh from Goldman Sachs’ coinage. Fifteen years later, BRICS has moved to become a grouping with undeniable weight via its expanded membership, own financial institutions, and a growing role in global governance. A central debate concerns whether BRICS is truly capable of reshaping global governance, or does it remain an informal talk shop?
The Global South and the BRICS Moment
The current international backdrop explains much of the renewed interest in BRICS. The international system is strained with geopolitical tensions that have eroded trust and trade wars undermining the rules-based order. Meanwhile, the material pressures on the Global South have deepened. According to IMF estimates, global debt has surged to over $102 trillion, with developing countries carrying around $31 trillion of that burden. Servicing these obligations leaves little fiscal space for essential investments in health, education, and climate adaptation. It is in this context of mounting global dysfunction that BRICS acquires significance. The grouping evokes both apprehension and appreciation. On the one hand, it is informal, diverse, and lacks the institutional muscle of established organizations. On the other, it gives voice to problems of the Global South that traditional forums sideline, from fertilizer shortages to women’s development. With Western climate commitments faltering, BRICS has the chance to position itself as the development-rooted climate voice of the Global South. Against this backdrop, the Global South increasingly looks to BRICS for alternatives that are people-centric, causing it to be cast as a rare “silver lining.”
From Brazil and India’s vantage point, BRICS should be understood less as an anti-Western bloc and more as a forum for political coordination among diverse partners. Despite the vastly different geographies and historical trajectories of its members, BRICS has converged on common goals of promoting health, education, and development. Brazil’s emphasis is on convergence advancing climate finance, research and development for vaccines, trade facilitation, and digital platforms. Crucially, BRICS insists that it is not designed as a platform against the West. This pragmatism is visible in Brazil’s foreign policy, where it positioned itself as a bridge-builder in North–South dialogue. At the same time, Brazil remains clear on core reforms. It advocates for a renewed push on multilateral trade, resists unilateral tariffs, and stresses the need to preserve BRICS’s role in peace and security debates. Importantly, both Brazil and South Africa support India’s longstanding demand for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, signalling how BRICS could align around institutional reform even amidst differences.
If Brazil sees BRICS as a pragmatic bridge, India projects it as a vehicle for reform and tangible outcomes. BRICS’s strength lies in offering alternatives that are non-conditional and non-prescriptive. This is precisely what debt-distressed developing nations are seeking. India has already begun experimenting with local currency settlements. Over thirty such arrangements have been initiated and have sought to globalize its digital public infrastructure model. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) is being adapted for cross-border use, and India has encouraged BRICS members to explore similar low-cost, inclusive platforms. Such initiatives matter, as while debates about de-dollarization may be overstated, incremental expansion of local currency settlements could provide a real cushion for Global South economies. Under its upcoming chairship of BRICS in 2025, India plans to push for a people-centric agenda that prioritizes low-cost digital solutions, energy security through platforms like the International Solar Alliance, and women’s development. For India, BRICS is about producing scalable innovations that align with its domestic development model.
The Paradoxes and Future of BRICS
The promise and potential of BRICS cannot be separated from its paradoxes. The grouping presents itself as the collective voice of the Global South, and two of its most prominent members, China and Russia, are major powers with geopolitical agendas that frequently clash with the West. At the Rio Summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva cast BRICS as the heir to the Non-Aligned Movement. In his view, BRICS is less a bloc of powers than a platform for multipolarity capable of promoting reform, mediating conflict, and creating space for diverse models of development. Yet practice often deviates from this aspiration. For India, Brazil, and South Africa, BRICS functions best when it advances pragmatic reforms within existing multilateral structures. By contrast, China and Russia frequently emphasize BRICS as part of a broader contestation against Western dominance. Questions were raised about the absence of Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin at the Rio summit. Their absence did not diminish the weight of their countries within the forum but rather highlighted the way geopolitics shapes BRICS’ credibility.
China in particular has sought to place itself at the center of the grouping’s institutional architecture. From the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to the BRICS Pay system, Beijing has promoted platforms that, while formally multilateral, align with its wider agenda of strengthening South–South connectivity, expanding infrastructure finance, and reducing reliance on the dollar. These initiatives allow China to reshape global governance incrementally from within BRICS, even as it avoids projecting the grouping as overtly anti-Western. Russia, however, has pursued a different approach. Within BRICS, Moscow has carved out the role of mediator between China and India while simultaneously using the platform to push overtly anti-Western narratives. The contrast between the 2024 Kazan summit, hosted by Russia, and the Rio summit could not have been sharper. In Kazan, Moscow positioned BRICS as a vehicle to counter sanctions, accelerate de-dollarization, and champion what it calls the “world majority” against Western hegemony. In Rio, by contrast, the rhetoric was more restrained, reflecting Brazil’s emphasis on convergence rather than confrontation. These tensions complicate the grouping’s trajectory. On the one hand, BRICS’s recent expansion signals its growing appeal as an alternative forum. On the other, enlargement risks diluting coherence and aggravating internal differences.
Proposals for institutionalization, such as creating a BRICS Secretariat, reflect recognition that the grouping must move beyond informality if it is to deliver concrete outcomes. The ultimate test for BRICS will be delivery. The New Development Bank has shown that finance can be extended without the intrusive conditionalities of Bretton Woods institutions. Currency settlements and digital payment linkages from India’s UPI experiments to Brazil’s calls for renewal of intra-BRICS trade platforms are steps in the right direction. BRICS as a silver lining captures both its promise and its precarity. For Brazil, the grouping’s value lies in seeking convergence; for India, the emphasis is on institutionalization and delivery. BRICS is admired outside as an emerging counterweight but is wrestling within with the contradictions. BRICS should seek to consolidate its role as a supplementary pillar of global governance where it normalizes non-conditional finance, enables plural pathways of development, and foregrounds the priorities of the Global South that are sidelined elsewhere.
