Recent Developments:
- Ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit, scheduled in New Delhi on 12–13 September 2026, Chinese Ambassador to India XFeihong proposed a ‘POWER’ framework for strengthening cooperation within an expanded BRICS and giving greater institutional weight to the Global South.
- The proposal is particularly significant because India holds the BRICS Chairship in 2026, while China is scheduled to assume the rotating presidency in 2027, creating an opportunity for policy continuity but also placing India-China relations at the centre of the grouping’s future trajectory.
- India’s 2026 BRICS Chairship is guided by the overarching theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, with the agenda increasingly focusing on development, energy security, technology, trade, digital cooperation and institutional reform.
- The proposed framework should be understood as a Chinese diplomatic vision rather than an officially adopted BRICS doctrine. Its importance lies in the debate it generates over whether BRICS should primarily function as a development-oriented Global South platform or as a counterweight to Western influence.
Understanding the BRICS ‘POWER’ Framework:
BRICS as a Global South Platform:
- BRICS has evolved from a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China into a broader coordination mechanism representing major emerging economies and developing countries.
- The grouping currently has 11 full members — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia — while a separate partner-country category has also been developed.
- BRICS is an informal political and diplomatic coordination mechanism, rather than a treaty-based international organisation; it has no constitutive treaty, permanent secretariat or independent budget.
- Its principal significance lies in strengthening South-South cooperation, increasing the representation of emerging economies in global governance and advocating reforms of institutions such as the United Nations, IMF, World Bank and WTO.
Five Pillars of the POWER Framework:
- The proposed POWER architecture uses five pillars — Principle, Openness, Win-Win, Engine and Responsibility — to outline a broad agenda covering political, economic, technological and developmental cooperation.
P — Principle: Sovereign Equality and International Law:
- The Principle pillar emphasises sovereign equality, non-interference and peaceful settlement of disputes, drawing upon the principles of the UN Charter.
- It seeks to strengthen a multipolar international order in which developing countries exercise greater agency rather than remaining dependent on established centres of global power.
- For India, this principle is relevant because its foreign policy emphasises strategic autonomy, sovereignty, territorial integrity and a rules-based international order.
O — Openness: Multilateral Trade and Connectivity:
- The Openness pillar calls for preservation of a rules-based multilateral trading system centred on the WTO, including the principle of non-discriminatory Most-Favoured-Nation treatment.
- It advocates resistance to excessive geopolitical decoupling, protectionism and punitive tariff barriers, while promoting cooperation in infrastructure, energy and critical-mineral supply chains.
- India can use this approach to advocate open but fair trade, greater market access and resilient global value chains while protecting sensitive domestic sectors.
W — Win-Win: Development-Centred Cooperation:
- The Win-Win pillar places socioeconomic development at the centre of multilateral cooperation and links BRICS priorities with the Sustainable Development Goals and the post-2030 development agenda.
- It proposes greater use of local-currency settlements, interoperable cross-border payment systems and reciprocal credit arrangements to reduce exposure to exchange-rate volatility and external financial pressures.
- Such cooperation could complement existing BRICS financial mechanisms without requiring the immediate creation of a common currency.
E — Engine: Growth, Industrialisation and Technology:
- The Engine pillar seeks to position BRICS as a driver of global growth through cooperation in digital public infrastructure, green technologies, advanced manufacturing and Artificial Intelligence.
- The technology agenda is particularly relevant for India because its experience with UPI, Digital Public Infrastructure and digital governance provides potential areas for South-South technology cooperation.
- India’s BRICS Chairship has already promoted technology-oriented cooperation, including discussions on resilient digital infrastructure, cybersecurity, digital skills, innovation and startups.
- Cooperation in Artificial Intelligence can help developing countries address the digital divide, develop locally relevant technologies and establish common principles for trustworthy and human-centric AI governance.
R — Responsibility: Continuity and Global South Leadership:
- The Responsibility pillar seeks to use the consecutive presidencies of India in 2026 and China in 2027 to maintain policy continuity and strengthen the institutional effectiveness of the expanded BRICS.
- It also supports greater representation of developing countries through reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions and the UN Security Council.
- However, continuity will depend upon whether India and China can separate areas of multilateral cooperation from unresolved bilateral disagreements.
Strategic Significance for India:
India-China Coordination within BRICS:
- The POWER proposal arrives during a period in which India-China engagement has shown signs of stabilisation, creating space for cooperation in areas of common interest while bilateral differences remain unresolved.
- India can use BRICS to pursue functional cooperation without compromising strategic autonomy, particularly in development finance, climate action, technology, trade and Global South representation.
- India should nevertheless avoid allowing BRICS to become an explicitly anti-Western coalition, because India maintains extensive strategic, economic and technological partnerships with the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia and other partners.
Economic and Financial Opportunities:
- BRICS provides a platform for strengthening local-currency financing, development finance and payment interoperability.
- The New Development Bank is particularly important because it finances infrastructure and sustainable-development projects and has expanded its use of local-currency financing. Its current strategy includes a substantial role for local currencies, while its recent operations demonstrate continued diversification of funding sources.
- The NDB has also demonstrated practical relevance to India through infrastructure financing, including projects in transport and urban development.
Technology, Energy and Supply Chains:
- BRICS cooperation can help diversify supply chains for critical minerals, renewable-energy equipment, semiconductors, fertilisers and strategic technologies.
- India’s 2026 BRICS Energy agenda has already promoted cooperation in renewable energy, hydrogen, energy storage, critical minerals, carbon capture, digitalisation and energy efficiency.
- Such cooperation can strengthen strategic resilience while reducing excessive dependence on geographically concentrated production networks.
Key Challenges:
Divergent Strategic Visions:
- India generally views BRICS as a platform for strategic autonomy, development cooperation and reform of global governance, whereas some members may seek to position it more explicitly as a counterweight to Western influence.
- This divergence can make consensus difficult on contentious geopolitical issues.
India-China Economic Asymmetry:
- Despite calls for greater trade openness, India faces a persistent and substantial trade deficit with China, alongside concerns regarding market access, non-tariff barriers and dependence on Chinese inputs.
- Therefore, deeper BRICS trade integration must be accompanied by supply-chain diversification and domestic manufacturing capacity.
Geopolitical and Security Frictions:
- BRICS includes countries with competing geopolitical interests, bilateral disputes and different positions on major international conflicts.
- India-China border tensions demonstrate that economic and multilateral cooperation cannot automatically eliminate strategic competition.
Financial and Monetary Constraints:
- Greater use of local currencies faces challenges arising from currency convertibility, exchange-rate volatility, capital-account restrictions, liquidity constraints and unequal financial-market depth.
- A common BRICS currency is therefore considerably more difficult than improving bilateral or multilateral settlement mechanisms.
Institutional Cohesion:
- The rapid expansion of BRICS has increased its demographic and economic weight but has also increased the diversity of its political systems, foreign-policy priorities and economic structures.
- Maintaining consensus-based decision-making while pursuing ambitious institutional reforms will remain a major challenge.
Way Ahead:
- India should promote a development-oriented and inclusive BRICS that cooperates with both Western and non-Western institutions instead of defining itself primarily through opposition to the West.
- India and China should use their successive presidencies to build practical cooperation in trade, development finance, climate action, digital public infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, energy and critical supply chains, while maintaining bilateral disputes on a separate diplomatic track.
- BRICS should strengthen the New Development Bank, expand local-currency financing and improve interoperability among national payment systems rather than prematurely pursuing a common currency.
- The grouping should develop transparent and human-centric AI governance frameworks that promote innovation while addressing algorithmic concentration, data governance, cybersecurity and the digital divide.
- Greater emphasis should be placed on implementation-oriented cooperation, including measurable projects in infrastructure, health, education, food security, renewable energy and digital connectivity.
- BRICS should continue advocating reform of the UN Security Council, IMF and World Bank, while ensuring that institutional reform remains consistent with wider multilateral cooperation.
Conclusion:
- The proposed POWER framework reflects the growing ambition of BRICS to shape the global economic and political order rather than merely participate in existing institutions.
- Its success, however, will depend less on rhetorical declarations and more on the ability of members to convert their considerable demographic and economic weight into practical cooperation, institutional capacity and development outcomes.
- For India, the optimal approach is to make BRICS a platform for strategic autonomy, Global South leadership, economic resilience and multilateral reform, while avoiding its transformation into an exclusive anti-Western bloc.
- If India and China can combine sovereign equality, economic pragmatism and issue-based cooperation, BRICS can contribute to a more representative, multipolar and development-oriented international order.
Value Addition for UPSC:
- Essay: “The rise of the Global South is reshaping the architecture of global governance.”
- Key analytical theme: BRICS should be viewed not simply as an anti-Western coalition, but as a contested platform where development cooperation, strategic autonomy, economic diversification and competing geopolitical visions intersect.
- Important factual correction: BRICS currently consists of 11 full members, while the POWER framework remains a proposed diplomatic framework and is not an officially adopted BRICS institutional framework.
