India in BRICS+ — Expansion, De-dollarisation, the New Multilateralism

Why this matters now

BRICS is the most consequential non-Western multilateral grouping of our era. It exists in the gap left by the unreformed Bretton Woods institutions — the IMF, World Bank and WTO that still over-weight the Western economies relative to their share of global GDP. For India, BRICS serves four purposes: a channel to manage China, a forum to engage Russia despite Western sanctions, a platform to lead the Global South, and an instrument to push reform of the post-1945 order. None of these can be done through the Quad. So India invests in BRICS — but cautiously, refusing to let it become a vehicle of Chinese strategic ambition.

From BRIC to BRICS+

The story has four stages.

The 2024 expansion — what changed

The BRICS+ expansion was the biggest structural change in the grouping's history. It transformed BRICS from a five-member club into a tiered architecture with full members and partner states.

The expansion brought four shifts:

1. Energy geopolitics — three of the four new entrants (UAE, Iran, Egypt) sit on or near major oil and gas corridors. BRICS now includes a meaningful share of OPEC+;
2. Currency conversation — Iran's sanctions-evasion needs and UAE's role as a financial intermediary intensified the de-dollarisation debate;
3. Diversity dilution — the expanded group is harder to align on common positions. The Johannesburg declaration was 26 pages; the Kazan declaration was 43 pages, full of carve-outs;
4. China's centrality — most new entrants have stronger ties to China than to India. The expansion entrenches Beijing's gravitational pull within the bloc.

The New Development Bank — BRICS' tangible institution

The New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai, is the most concrete output of fifteen years of BRICS summitry. It was operationalised in 2015 under K.V. Kamath (a former ICICI Bank chairman) as the first President. Dilma Rousseff has been President since 2023.

NDB design

• Authorised capital: $100 billion. Subscribed: $50 billion, equally divided among the five founders ($10 billion each).
• Governance: One vote per share, but the original five jointly retain 55% — protecting them from dilution as the bank expands. New members pay in, but cannot tilt voting weight.
• Currency: ~30% of loans are in local currencies — a deliberate departure from World Bank dollar-denominated standard.
• Sectoral focus: renewable energy, transport, water and sanitation, social infrastructure, digital infrastructure.
• Regional offices: Johannesburg (Africa), São Paulo (Americas), Moscow (Russia, Central Asia), GIFT City Gandhinagar (India), Cairo (added 2023).

Cumulative approved loans crossed $35 billion by end-2024. Indian projects include Mumbai metro extensions, renewable energy investments by Tata and Adani, the Bharatmala highway corridor. The Bank has admitted Bangladesh, UAE, Egypt, Uruguay and Algeria as members — an explicit growth strategy.

NDB's strengths: lower interest rates than commercial bonds, local-currency lending option, lighter conditionality than IMF, Indian co-chairing of vice-presidency. Weaknesses: no AAA rating (yet), smaller balance sheet than World Bank/ADB, slow disbursement, governance constrained by Russia sanctions exposure (NDB paused new Russia lending in 2022).

Contingent Reserve Arrangement — the unused insurance

Alongside the NDB, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) was set up in 2014 as a $100 billion mutual currency-swap pool. Contributions: China $41 billion, India/Brazil/Russia $18 billion each, South Africa $5 billion.

The CRA functions through bilateral currency-swap arrangements between central banks. A member facing balance-of-payments stress can request dollars from the pool against its own currency, up to its quota multiple. The IMF-de-linked portion (where a country can draw without an IMF programme) is 30%; the remaining 70% requires an IMF programme to be in place.

No member has yet drawn from the CRA. Its existence is the insurance — and the political statement of an alternative to IMF emergency lending. Critics call it a paper tiger; defenders call it strategic redundancy.

The de-dollarisation debate — and where India stands

The most charged BRICS conversation since 2022 has been de-dollarisation. Russia, after Western sanctions, lost access to SWIFT and dollar payments and pivoted to yuan and rouble settlements. Iran sought BRICS membership partly for sanctions-resistant trade. China sees yuan internationalisation as a strategic project. South Africa and Brazil are sympathetic. The UAE is positioned as a settlement hub.

India's position is distinctively cautious:

• Bilateral local-currency settlement: yes. RBI's special rupee vostro account framework (2022) allows trade with Russia in rupees. Similar arrangements with UAE (dirham-rupee), Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Iran (limited), Mauritius. SBI and other banks have set up corresponding-bank channels.
• A common BRICS currency: no. PM Modi and EAM Jaishankar have repeatedly said India has no interest in a shared BRICS currency. Reason: India runs trade deficits with most BRICS members (especially China). A common currency would create automatic financing of those deficits in Beijing's favour — replicating the Eurozone's German trade-deficit problem.
• Anti-dollar rhetoric: no. Indian officials have repeatedly stated "we are not anti-dollar". The reasoning: dollar dominance is not India's fight, the dollar's role in trade financing is too useful, and overt anti-dollar posture would hurt India-US relations.

Indian negotiators softened the de-dollarisation language in the Kazan 2024 declaration. The final text spoke of "financial cooperation" and "local currency settlement" but did not commit to a common currency or instrument.

Kazan 2024 — the most consequential summit since 2014

The October 22-24, 2024 BRICS Kazan summit was a stress test. Russia hosted under partial Western isolation. Iran attended as a new full member. China and India were emerging from the October 21 LAC patrolling agreement. UAE and Saudi Arabia had divergent positions. The summit produced:

• Kazan Declaration — 43 pages; references to Palestine, Ukraine (mild), UN reform (renewed), de-dollarisation (softened);
• BRICS Pay — preliminary work on a payments connectivity layer linking national fast-payment systems;
• Partner states category — 13 invited; gives potential members proximity without full membership;
• Modi-Xi bilateral — first formal meeting since 2019; signalled tactical thaw on the border;
• BRICS Grain Exchange — Russia's proposal for an alternative grain trading mechanism;
• NDB expansion roadmap — pathway for additional African and Asian members.

India's three signature wins at Kazan: the Modi-Xi meeting; the watering down of de-dollarisation language; the inclusion of Indonesia among partner states (Indonesia is now a full member from January 2025).

India's BRICS strategy — the specifics

India approaches BRICS with four objectives:

1. Working channel with China. BRICS provides multilateral cover for India-China engagement that bilateral politics makes hard. The Sherpa channel runs continuously; finance ministers meet four times a year; NSAs meet annually. Without BRICS, India-China high-level dialogue would be intermittent.
2. Russia maintenance. With direct sanctions on Russia, India needed legal cover to continue defence and energy ties. BRICS provides multilateral legitimacy for India-Russia engagement. The NDB's regional office at GIFT City became a vehicle for routing energy investments.
3. Global South leadership. India hosted the Voice of Global South Summits (January 2023, November 2023, August 2024), positioning itself as the developing-country interpreter of BRICS positions. The G20 presidency narrative built on this.
4. Reform pressure. BRICS provides a vehicle for India to push UNSC reform, WTO reform, IMF quota reform — positions where Western powers are status-quo and India is reformist.

The India-specific constraint: India will not let BRICS become an anti-Western alliance. Hence the rejection of common currency, the careful Kazan declaration language, the simultaneous deepening of Quad ties.

"BRICS is not anti-Western, even if it is sometimes non-Western." — EAM Dr S. Jaishankar, formulation used in multiple post-Kazan briefings.

Balancing BRICS and the Quad

The BRICS-Quad balance is the cleanest illustration of multi-alignment:

The September 2024 Quad Wilmington and October 2024 BRICS Kazan summits, attended by PM Modi within four weeks, made the balancing publicly visible. Both sides accepted India's right to participate in the other. This tolerance is itself an Indian win — it would not be available to any other major power.

Critiques and limits

BRICS attracts three types of critique:

1. "BRICS is theatre." The view that BRICS produces declarations but little policy convergence; that members diverge sharply on Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Iran sanctions; that the NDB is small relative to the World Bank; that the CRA is unused. India's response: institutions take decades to mature; the NDB has crossed $35 bn in 10 years (faster than the ADB's first decade).
2. "BRICS is a Chinese vehicle." The view that China provides the bulk of NDB capital, drives the expansion agenda, dominates the membership of new entrants, and is using BRICS as an instrument of yuan internationalisation. India's response: India's veto on common currency, the partner-states category, and the Modi-led Global South narrative are the visible counter-weights.
3. "BRICS+ dilutes coherence." The view that adding politically diverse members (Iran's revolutionary regime, UAE's monarchical-strategic hedging, Egypt's IMF dependency, Ethiopia's civil war recovery) makes consensus impossible. The Kazan declaration's 43 pages are the symptom. India's response: a wider tent gives Global South leadership; coherence can be managed through Sherpa work.

UPSC PYQs and likely future questions

• 2016 GS-2: "BRICS in International Relations — what is its purpose?" (early treatment)
• 2022 GS-2: "'New Bilateralism' as a feature of contemporary international relations — discuss with reference to QUAD and BRICS-style groupings."
• Likely 2026 question: "Examine the implications of the 2024 BRICS+ expansion for India's strategic autonomy and Global South leadership. Should India support a common BRICS currency?"
• Likely 2026 question: "Critically evaluate the New Development Bank as an alternative to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. To what extent does it advance India's developmental priorities?"
• Essay angle: "Multi-alignment as a foreign policy doctrine" — BRICS and Quad as the canonical example.

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