Analysis: What India can realistically get from hosting the BRICS summit
This is an analysis piece. It reflects the author's assessment of publicly reported facts.
New Delhi hosts the 18th BRICS summit on 12 and 13 September, its first as chair of the enlarged grouping. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian, South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa and Indonesia's Prabowo Subianto are among the leaders expected at Bharat Mandapam, along with UN Secretary-General António Guterres and a long list of partner-country heads, according to Organiser and Asianet Newsable. The weekend ends with a New Delhi Declaration. The question is what it can credibly contain.
The scale is real
BRICS is no longer a five-member talking shop. Organiser puts the grouping at 49 per cent of world population and around 40 per cent of global GDP; The Hindu's analysis this week cites roughly 24 per cent of world merchandise exports and 22 per cent of FDI inflows in 2024. The New Development Bank has lent more than $40 billion to members. India's own bilateral numbers with one new member, the UAE, show what the network can do: non-oil trade grew 17 per cent in 2025 to over $76 billion, with a $200 billion target for 2032.
India's stated theme, "resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability", is deliberately uncontroversial: food and energy security, health, disaster resilience, supply chains, digital infrastructure and reform of multilateral institutions. That is the ground on which consensus is easiest.
Where the fault lines are
The hard part is everything else. Iran's president arrives days after US strikes destroyed five Iranian tankers and Brent crude crossed $100, as CNBC reported on 9 September. Tehran will want strong language on the Strait of Hormuz; India, the world's third-largest oil importer with roughly 30 per cent of its crude passing through that strait, wants calm, not a communique that reads as anti-American. Russia will push de-dollarisation; India has consistently declined to sign on to a common currency and prefers the softer formula of local-currency settlement. The Hindu's analysis notes a BRICS monetary union remains implausible given divergent inflation and exchange-rate regimes.
What India actually wants
Three things, in my reading. First, to be seen as the convenor of the Global South, a role it also claimed at the G20 in 2023. Second, practical outcomes it can point to: health and pandemic-preparedness mechanisms, agriculture cooperation, and NDB financing for Indian projects. Third, to keep the grouping from becoming a China-Russia vehicle, which is why the outreach list is so long and includes Malaysia, Thailand, Kazakhstan and Nigeria.
Organiser, a publication close to the ruling party's ideological family, itself concedes that consensus may be difficult given members' differing interests. That is an unusually candid admission from a friendly quarter.
The realistic yardstick
Judge the summit not by the declaration's length but by three items: whether Hormuz language is balanced enough that Washington does not react; whether any concrete local-currency payment mechanism is announced rather than merely "explored"; and whether India secures named projects or institutional posts. A summit that delivers on two of the three would be a success for a chair managing eleven members and a war-adjacent oil market. Anything that reads as a bloc statement against the West would be a diplomatic cost India, of all members, has least reason to pay.