Key Takeaways
- India’s BRICS 2026 presidency seeks to prevent a single power, especially China, from becoming the sole voice of the Global South.
- Providing a range of financing, technology and partnership options ensures strategic autonomy for developing nations.
- The summit theme of resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability positions BRICS as a platform for inclusive growth rather than a counter‑Western bloc.
India’s presidency of BRICS in 2026 comes at a moment when the architecture of global power is undergoing a fundamental transformation.
The 18th BRICS Summit, scheduled for New Delhi on September 12‑13, is more than another gathering of emerging economies. It is an opportunity for India to shape the political and economic direction of the Global South as China expands its influence across the developing world.
The real strategic question before New Delhi is not whether China should have a seat at the BRICS table— it unquestionably should. The question is whether Beijing should be allowed to define what the Global South represents, its priorities, and how its global relationships evolve.
China has spent more than two decades building an extraordinary network of economic relationships across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Through infrastructure investment, trade, development financing, manufacturing, telecommunications, technology and strategic partnerships, Beijing has created an economic presence that extends far beyond its immediate neighbourhood. The Belt and Road Initiative has been central to this strategy, providing China with an instrument through which roads, railways, ports, energy projects and digital infrastructure have become part of a wider geopolitical ecosystem. There is nothing inherently illegitimate about China pursuing its economic interests, just as there is nothing illegitimate about developing countries seeking Chinese investment. The strategic concern for India, however, is what happens when economic dependence begins to translate into political influence and when countries with limited alternatives find themselves increasingly dependent upon a single external power.
India must offer the Global South an alternative, but that alternative cannot simply be an anti-China coalition. Such an approach would misunderstand both the aspirations of developing countries and India’s own diplomatic tradition. The nations of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America do not want to become pawns in a new Cold War between Washington and Beijing. Most of them want investment, technology, energy security, access to markets, infrastructure, employment and greater representation in global institutions. They want strategic autonomy, not another hierarchy in which one powerful bloc dictates their choices. India’s opportunity lies precisely in recognising this reality and positioning itself as a champion of choice, plurality and sovereign decision-making.
This makes India’s BRICS presidency strategically important. The theme of “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability” provides New Delhi with an opportunity to shift the organisation away from the simplistic narrative that BRICS exists primarily as a counterweight to the West. BRICS should instead become an institution through which emerging economies build greater economic resilience and strategic autonomy while cooperating with every major power centre. The distinction is important because the Global South is not synonymous with anti-Westernism. A developing nation can oppose aspects of Western foreign policy while simultaneously seeking American technology, European investment, Japanese infrastructure, Russian energy or Chinese manufacturing. Its interests are determined by national priorities rather than ideological loyalty.
India understands this better than most countries because its own foreign policy has increasingly demonstrated that strategic autonomy does not mean strategic isolation. New Delhi maintains relationships with Washington, Moscow, Tokyo, Brussels, the Gulf, Africa and Southeast Asia while continuing to engage Beijing. India’s ability to speak simultaneously to competing power centres gives it a diplomatic credibility that can be used constructively within BRICS. Rather than forcing countries to choose sides, India can make the case for a world in which developing nations have enough partners to prevent any one external power from becoming indispensable.
That principle of choice should become the foundation of India’s BRICS strategy.
The greatest danger for the Global South is not necessarily Chinese investment itself; it is the absence of alternatives. A country that depends upon one country for infrastructure financing, another for critical technology and another for energy can negotiate effectively because it has options. But when one external power becomes dominant across infrastructure, telecommunications, trade, finance, energy and technology, economic relationships can gradually acquire strategic consequences. India should therefore work towards a BRICS ecosystem in which member states have access to multiple sources of finance, technology and expertise, enabling them to make decisions based on national interest rather than economic necessity.
India has considerable strengths with which to build such an alternative. Its digital public infrastructure, information technology sector, pharmaceutical industry, space programme, renewable-energy capabilities, agricultural expertise and rapidly expanding startup ecosystem provide developing countries with practical areas for cooperation. India’s digital transformation in particular offers an important model because it demonstrates how technology can be deployed at enormous scale while remaining accessible to populations that cannot afford the expensive technological ecosystems traditionally associated with advanced economies. If India can export this experience through partnerships rather than dependency, it can create an entirely different form of influence across the Global South.
This is where India can differentiate itself from China. Beijing has demonstrated its ability to build physical infrastructure at enormous speed and scale. India should demonstrate that the next generation of development must combine physical infrastructure with digital infrastructure, human capital, innovation, entrepreneurship and institutional capacity. The developing world does not merely need bridges, ports and railways; it needs education systems capable of producing skilled workers, healthcare systems capable of reaching remote populations, digital platforms that expand economic participation and financial systems that allow small businesses to grow. India has an opportunity to make these areas central to the BRICS development agenda.
The financial dimension will be equally important. Developing countries have repeatedly suffered when global financial conditions tighten, currencies weaken or commodity prices rise. The wars and geopolitical crises of recent years have demonstrated how quickly instability in one region can generate consequences thousands of kilometres away through energy markets, food prices, shipping routes and supply chains. BRICS can play a meaningful role by strengthening financial cooperation, encouraging responsible development finance and exploring mechanisms that reduce vulnerability to external shocks. The objective should not be to create a closed financial bloc but to increase the negotiating capacity and resilience of developing economies.
India should also resist the temptation to allow BRICS to become an explicitly anti-American or anti-Western platform. Such a transformation would ultimately weaken the organisation because many BRICS members have deep economic, technological and security relationships with Western nations. It would also contradict India’s own interest in a multipolar international system. New Delhi has consistently argued for greater strategic autonomy, and strategic autonomy loses its meaning if it merely replaces dependence on one bloc with dependence on another.
India’s message should therefore be simple but strategically powerful: the Global South should belong to no one power.
It should belong to the countries that constitute it.
This is perhaps the most important geopolitical proposition India can make through BRICS. The Global South should not become a political instrument through which one country projects its worldview onto dozens of developing nations. Nor should it become an ideological counterweight to the West. It should become a collective platform through which developing countries negotiate a better position within the international system, demand greater representation in global institutions and secure the economic and technological capabilities necessary to determine their own futures.
China will remain a central force within this process, and India should neither deny nor fear that reality. The objective is not to contain China but to prevent strategic concentration. A strong China can contribute to the Global South; a dominant China defining the Global South would be an entirely different proposition. The distinction is one India must keep firmly in view.
The 2026 BRICS Summit therefore gives Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian government an opportunity to articulate a larger vision of global order. India can argue that multipolarity should not merely mean several great powers competing for influence. It should mean a world in which smaller and developing nations have greater freedom to choose their partners, diversify their dependencies and pursue their national interests without being forced into geopolitical camps.
India’s greatest contribution to the Global South may ultimately not be another institution, another declaration or another financial mechanism. It may be the creation of alternatives.
If India can help developing countries access multiple sources of capital, technology, markets and strategic partnerships, it will have done something far more consequential than merely challenging China. It will have strengthened the sovereignty of the Global South itself.
The future international order is unlikely to be defined by a single superpower. It will increasingly be shaped by competing centres of economic, technological, military and diplomatic influence. In such an environment, the countries that build networks of cooperation will possess enormous strategic leverage. India has the opportunity to become the principal network-builder of the Global South, not by demanding allegiance but by expanding choices.
That should be the true ambition of India’s BRICS presidency.
New Delhi should not seek to replace China as the voice of the Global South. It should ensure that the Global South has no single voice because no single country should speak for it. India’s role should be to help create a system in which developing nations can speak for themselves, negotiate from a position of strength and choose their partnerships without coercion.
If China wants to lead, it should have to compete on the merits of its ideas, investments and partnerships. If India wants to lead, it must do the same.
The ultimate contest is therefore not between India and China. It is between two possible futures for the Global South: one in which influence becomes concentrated in the hands of a dominant power, and another in which countries possess enough choices to preserve their strategic autonomy.
India’s historic opportunity is to make the second future possible.
BRICS must not become China’s instrument for defining the Global South. Under India’s leadership, it can become something far more consequential: a platform that gives the Global South the confidence, capability and freedom to define itself.
