BRICS – How India uses the expanded BRICS group while keeping its ties with the West.
- 11 BRICS members (five until 2024, plus 10 partners)
- ~45% of world output (in PPP terms, against the G7’s 31%)
- $44bn approved by the BRICS bank (141 projects since 2015)
- $9.5bn of it lent to India (across 32 projects since 2016)
Five members until 2024, eleven now, with ten more in an outer ring. India chaired it through 2026 and hosted the summit, and spent the year keeping it from becoming an anti-Western bloc.
The expanded group covers about half the world’s population and some 45% of world output in purchasing-power terms, more than the G7. In dollars it is still well behind, at roughly 28%, and its eleven members agree on very little.
India’s use of it is institutional, not ideological. It has never backed de-dollarisation and says there is no BRICS currency proposal. What it does take is the bank: $44bn approved since 2015, $9.5bn of it for 32 Indian projects.
The signal to watch: Whether the outer ring becomes members. Eleven can still negotiate; twenty-one is a conference.
Where we would take your group
- Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. Where the eighteenth summit met in September 2026.
- The NDB regional office, GIFT City. The bank’s India desk, outside Mumbai’s banking district.
- An exporter settling in rupees. The policy, one invoice at a time.
Questions for the debrief
- BRICS now spans eleven members with little in common beyond not being the West. At what size does a coalition stop being able to decide anything?
- India chairs the group and defends the dollar in the same breath. Is that incoherence, or the most useful seat in the room?
- The New Development Bank lends where the World Bank already lends. What is the case for a second lender, and who is it a better deal for?
