Rethinking Power: Why BRICS Matters Now

BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—is the hot topic now. Once brushed aside as a casual alliance of emerging economies, it is now stepping up as a real geopolitical force, especially after Donald Trump’s unplanned, aggressive, and provocative decision to impose steep tariffs on BRICS countries.

With the group’s expansion to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE, and—by 2025—Indonesia, BRICS now speaks for 46% of the world’s population and nearly 40% of global GDP (PPP). But this is more than just a bigger club. It reflects a growing restlessness with the older, Western-dominated economic system—a system many in the Global South feel has kept them dependent and exposed.

The world is changing. Global supply chains are splintering. The dollar is facing more pushback.

Food, finance, and digital systems are all being politicised. In this new landscape, BRICS is trying to offer not just an alternative path, but a different way of thinking about power

Why Are Countries Joining? Not Just Anti-West, But Pro-South

The new BRICS members aren’t all joining for the same reasons, but they share a common interest in more flexibility and fairness. Iran seeks a buffer from Western sanctions. The UAE wants to cement its energy partnerships while accessing high-growth Southern markets. Ethiopia and Indonesia are looking for a platform that reflects Southern priorities without choosing between big power blocs.

China views BRICS expansion as a pathway to institutionalising multipolarity, challenging the ideological dominance of the West. India, while wary of Chinese dominance, sees the grouping as a platform to elevate the Global South’s voice, provided it remains non-hierarchical.

The result is a more inclusive, but also more complex, BRICS. Diversity is its strength—but also its Achilles’ heel, demanding deft diplomacy and institutional innovation.

Where BRICS Has Real Strength: Food, Finance, and Digital Tools

Feeding the World: Agriculture as Soft Power

BRICS countries collectively produce 42% of global wheat, 52% of rice, and 46% of soybeans, making them not just major food producers but powerful market influencers. As climate disruptions intensify and export bans become more common, BRICS holds the potential to stabilise global food supplies. At the 2025 Rio Summit, BRICS leaders jointly opposed the use of food exports as a geopolitical weapon and called for exempting humanitarian food aid from sanctions.

India’s role is pivotal. The United States, through bilateral trade talks, has pushed for deeper access to Indian agricultural markets, particularly for genetically modified (GM) crops and U.S.-based agri-tech firms. Biotech giants are lobbying to ease regulations under the guise of food security and innovation. But for India, the stakes go beyond tariffs. It must balance domestic food sovereignty, South-South solidarity, and growing pressure from foreign commercial interests. This is not just a trade negotiation—it’s a contest over control of seeds, data, and livelihoods.

History offers a warning. During the 2018–20 trade war, retaliatory tariffs by China and India disrupted agri-trade flows. China shifted its soybean imports from the U.S. to Brazil and Argentina, triggering long-term price volatility. In 2025, history echoes again. Trump’s reimposed steel and aluminium tariffs have hit Indian MSMEs hard—30% of orders cancelled, contracts stalled, and input costs rising. Fertiliser prices remain unstable due to supply constraints and tariff-inflated machinery costs.

In this environment, BRICS food and trade cooperation is not optional—it is urgent. With trust in the U.S. as a reliable trade partner eroding, BRICS must create grain reserves, alternative payment systems, and buffers against external shocks. For India, steering this transformation is not just a strategy—it’s leadership in a reshaping world.

The Finance Reimagined: BRICS’ Development Tools

We must confront an uncomfortable truth: BRICS countries still rely heavily on institutions like the IMF and World Bank, despite these being structurally tilted in favour of Western powers, particularly the United States. These institutions continue to operate under a weighted voting system that gives Washington outsized influence, often aligning financial decisions with its strategic agenda. The recent approval of a $20 billion World Bank Country Partnership Framework for Pakistan, just weeks after the Pahalgam terror attack, has reignited Indian concerns that global finance is being weaponised to overlook, if not enable, security threats. When development aid flows without accountability—even in the face of cross-border terrorism—it signals a deeper failure of multilateral governance. In this context, strengthening BRICS-led financial institutions like the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) is not just a symbolic gesture of autonomy—it is a practical imperative. These institutions offer equal representation, local currency lending, and fewer policy impositions, making them better suited to fund regional priorities without being hostage to geopolitical double standards.

Beyond SWIFT: A New Payments Architecture

BRICS countries account for over 20% of global trade, yet they remain reliant on dollar-dominated systems like SWIFT, leaving their economies exposed to unilateral sanctions and external financial coercion. The vulnerabilities are no longer hypothetical—Iran and Russia have already faced SWIFT bans, effectively cutting them off from the global financial system. Even India, while not under sanctions, continues to face political pressure from the United States over its oil trade with Russia, underscoring how access to payment infrastructure can be used as leverage.

This is why BRICS Pay is not just timely—it is essential. Envisioned as a cross-border digital payments platform, it aims to facilitate real-time trade settlements in local currencies, bypassing dollar-clearing systems and politically influenced networks. By linking national CBDCs—India’s e₹, China’s e-CNY, South Africa’s e-Rand—BRICS Pay offers a pathway to insulate trade from future disruptions and assert transactional sovereignty across the bloc.

India is well-positioned to lead this transformation. Its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) processes over 18 billion transactions monthly, proving that scalable, secure, and sovereign payment systems are already operational. UPI’s cross-border expansion into Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America further strengthens India’s credibility in designing fast, inclusive, and low-cost digital infrastructure.

But BRICS Pay is not just a technical project—it’s a political one. In a world where payments are no longer neutral but increasingly weaponised, BRICS cannot afford to outsource its financial bloodstream to systems it does not control. BRICS Pay represents more than innovation—it is a declaration of financial autonomy. Without it, the bloc’s growing trade power remains hostage to external forces. With it, BRICS has a real opportunity to reshape global finance on its own terms.

The Limits of Reordering: Sectors Still Anchored to the Dollar

Despite its growing ambition, BRICS remains a marginal player in several critical sectors, still deeply embedded in the dollar-based global order. Energy and heavy equipment deals continue to be financed primarily through Western banks, with insurance coverage provided by global giants such as Lloyd’s and Munich Re, and transactions largely denominated in U.S. dollars. These remain domains in which BRICS has yet to establish credible or competitive alternatives. In aviation and shipping, over 85% of global aircraft leases are denominated in dollars, with contracts controlled by U.S. and Irish lessors. Maritime insurance, port logistics, and vessel financing remain tethered to Western systems. The picture is even starker in advanced technology, where supply chains for semiconductors and precision equipment are dominated by U.S.-aligned economies—Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the EU—all of whom enforce strict export controls. These realities highlight a sobering truth: BRICS may be able to rewrite parts of the global rulebook, but it cannot yet control the pen. Full decoupling from entrenched financial and technological ecosystems will take not just decades of investment but a parallel rewriting of the legal, institutional, and technical frameworks that currently define these sectors. Until then, BRICS’ economic assertiveness will remain selective and uneven.

Power Without Parity: The Real Test of BRICS De-Dollarisation

BRICS’ pursuit of financial autonomy must be matched by institutional equity. De-dollarisation cannot succeed through symbolic moves alone; it demands a robust financial architecture that is transparent, inclusive, and structurally balanced. BRICS Pay, for instance, holds promise as a cross-border payments platform designed to insulate member states from Western sanctions—but it risks becoming a softer version of the very system it seeks to replace without safeguards against the dominance of any single economy. Moreover, the ambition to deepen monetary integration must confront a hard macroeconomic truth: the Mundell-Fleming Trilemma. This principle shows that no economy can simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, free capital flows, and an independent monetary policy—a trade-off particularly acute for BRICS countries like India, South Africa, and Russia, which prioritise monetary sovereignty and capital controls to manage inflation and exchange rate volatility. India’s position, often mischaracterised as scepticism, is grounded in economic realism. Without multipolar governance and currency parity, any shared system could shift dependency from Washington to Beijing. As BRICS builds its next-generation financial institutions, the real challenge lies not in digital engineering but in designing cooperation that preserves autonomy.

India vs. China: A Silent Contest for the BRICS Steering Wheel

The Rio Summit in 2025 made this clear. Xi Jinping’s absence and Narendra Modi’s pointed remarks about mineral dependencies underscored the leadership tension. China wants to institutionalise dominance—India wants to institutionalise pluralism.

Be it in the governance of BRICS Pay, control of the NDB, or leadership in digital trade standards, a tug-of-war is underway. Cooperation continues, but trust is thin.

From Rivalry to Rewiring: The BRICS Crossroads

The 2025 Rio Summit pulled back the curtain on a growing undercurrent within BRICS—the silent contest for leadership between India and China. Xi Jinping’s absence and Narendra Modi’s remarks on critical mineral dependencies signalled more than diplomatic theatre. They reflected a deeper fault line: China seeks to institutionalise dominance, while India insists on institutionalising pluralism. Whether it’s BRICS Pay governance, control over the New Development Bank, or standard-setting in digital trade, collaboration is active, but trust is fragile.