Today, eleven countries sit together in New Delhi. There will be flags, security, big cars and television anchors using words like trade, Global South
and geopolitics. Somewhere, a child may look at the flags and ask his father a simple question: “Why have all these countries come to India?”
“For BRICS,” the father says.
“What is BRICS?”
That is where the real question begins. Most of us know the word. We have heard it for years. But asked to explain it in two minutes, many of us would struggle. We know the name. We are less sure of the meaning and if a citizen does not know why something matters, how can that citizen judge whether it is important?
So set the diplomatic language aside for a moment.
BRICS began as BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India, China. South Africa joined later, giving the group its name. It has since grown to eleven members, adding Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Indonesia. Together, these countries hold about half the world’s population and roughly 40 per cent of global economic output. India is hosting the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12 and 13, its fourth time chairing the group.
But numbers alone don’t explain BRICS.
Think of eleven neighbours in a very large colony. They don’t agree on everything — different histories, different interests, sometimes very different ideas. But they still have reasons to sit together. They buy from each other. They need energy, food, technology, investment, jobs for their people. Their problems don’t stop at their borders. So even where they disagree, they find that talking is often more useful than standing alone.
That, broadly, is BRICS. Not a new country. Not a military alliance. Not a government above governments. A platform where members look for common ground on trade, finance, technology, health and development. India’s chairship this year rests on four ideas: resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability.
Now, the question that matters most to us.
What does any of this have to do with the person buying vegetables in Lucknow, running a shop in Jaipur, driving a taxi in Bengaluru, or studying in a college in Guwahati?
Closer than it looks.
An Indian company selling into another BRICS country. A software professional finding a new market abroad. A farmer’s produce reaching another country. A small business getting easier trade finance. These sound like conference-room matters, but their effects travel outward, into factories, farms, shops and homes.
They already are. In 2024, trade among BRICS countries reached about $1.17 trillion, according to India’s Commerce Ministry — though that is still only around 5 per cent of global trade. India has been pushing for smaller businesses to get better access to that trade and to trade finance.
There is a second reason BRICS matters. The world is no longer one simple marketplace. A war disturbs oil supplies somewhere. A shortage in one country raises prices in another. A financial decision taken far away reaches a currency closer to home. Countries want more partners, more choices, more ways to protect themselves when the world turns uncertain.
None of this means BRICS members agree on much. They don’t. Different political systems, different economic interests, different relationships with the rest of the world — and current global conflicts have only sharpened those differences. That is precisely what makes BRICS interesting. Its real test was never whether eleven countries can agree on everything. They clearly cannot. Its test is whether countries that disagree can still find enough common ground to do something useful together.
There is a lesson here that reaches beyond foreign policy. A family does not need to think alike to remain a family. A country does not grow stronger by making everyone identical. Sometimes strength comes from learning to live with difference while still finding a few things worth doing together.
That may be the simplest way to understand BRICS.
It is not eleven countries becoming one.
It is eleven different countries asking whether they can make some part of the world work better by working together.
Today, the conversation begins in rooms filled with diplomats. But its real value will be measured outside those rooms. Did trade get easier. Did a small business find a new customer. Did a student find a new opportunity. Did India gain something useful for its people.
Those are the questions that turn a summit into something more than a photograph.
A citizen doesn’t need every diplomatic phrase. But a citizen should know why India is at the table, what it is seeking, what it has to offer, and how decisions made around that table might eventually reach ordinary life.
Because foreign policy stops being foreign the moment it reaches your job, your prices, your opportunities, your future.
The eleven flags outside the summit venue belong to different countries.
But the world they represent is the one we all live in.
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This is YOUR INDIA | 002
Know it. Question it. Improve it.
