The Dragon and the Elephant in the Room
The most significant challenge for host nation India is its own fraught relationship with China. Ongoing border disputes in the Himalayas remain a core point of strategic mistrust that complicates any discussion of deeper cooperation. Deadly clashes in 2020
shattered years of relative peace, and despite recent disengagement pacts, tensions simmer. Reports as recent as August 2026 suggest fresh face-offs and encroachment claims, casting a long shadow over the summit. This bilateral friction is not just a sideshow; it represents a fundamental rivalry between the bloc's two largest members. While both nations may seek to use the BRICS platform to counter Western economic pressure, their competition for influence in the Global South and differing visions for the international order create an undercurrent of contention that will test India's diplomatic steering.
A House Divided on Global Conflicts
The bloc is far from unified in its response to major geopolitical crises. Russia's war in Ukraine has exposed deep divisions, with Moscow and Beijing often finding themselves at odds with the more neutral stances of India, Brazil, and South Africa. More recently, conflicts in the Middle East have created visible cracks. A BRICS foreign ministers' meeting in Delhi in May 2026 failed to produce a joint communiqué due to “differing views” on the crisis, particularly between new members Iran and the UAE. Reports indicated that Iran pushed for a strong condemnation of the U.S. and Israel, while other members, including India, sought more toned-down language, highlighting the difficulty of achieving consensus on sensitive geopolitical issues. This inability to speak with one voice on major global events undermines the group's ambition to act as a cohesive counterweight to Western-led alliances.
The Elusive Dream of a BRICS Currency
The idea of creating a common currency to challenge the dominance of the U.S. dollar is a recurring theme, championed enthusiastically by leaders like Brazil's President Lula da Silva and a sanctioned Russia. However, the proposal consistently hits a wall of practical and political realities. Member states have vastly different economic structures and priorities. India, for instance, has publicly opposed the idea of a common currency, fearing potential trade reprisals and preferring to promote the use of national currencies for bilateral trade. China is more focused on promoting the international use of its own currency, the renminbi. The debate exposes a core tension: while de-dollarisation is a shared aspiration, the path to achieving it is a source of significant disagreement, making any major breakthrough at the Delhi summit highly unlikely.
Growing Pains from Expansion
The recent expansion, which brought countries like Iran, the UAE, Egypt, and Ethiopia into the fold, was celebrated as a move to strengthen the voice of the Global South. However, a bigger family has also meant more diverse—and often conflicting—interests. The expansion has made the bloc more heterogeneous, with a mix of democratic and autocratic regimes, commodity exporters and importers, and even regional rivals like Iran and Saudi Arabia (who was also invited). This diversity complicates decision-making and makes achieving consensus significantly harder. A key challenge for India's presidency is to manage these new dynamics and create a coherent agenda, preventing the group from becoming merely a talk shop with limited concrete outcomes due to its unwieldy and ideologically fragmented nature.
