CNN Central News & Network-ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Delhi: The 2026 BRICS Summit in New Delhi has demonstrated an important reality of contemporary international diplomacy: influence is no longer measured simply by the ability to gather countries around a table, but by the ability to make countries with conflicting interests work together. For India, the summit was therefore both a diplomatic achievement and a demanding test of strategic maturity.
The unanimous adoption of the New Delhi Declaration, despite serious differences among member states, was itself significant. The grouping brought together countries with competing geopolitical priorities, including India and China, Russia and countries maintaining different relationships with the West, as well as Iran and the United Arab Emirates amid continuing tensions in West Asia.
India also secured an important diplomatic outcome on terrorism. The declaration strongly condemned the April 2025 Pahalgam terrorist attack, which killed 26 people, and called for zero tolerance towards terrorism, action against terrorist financing and safe havens, and accountability for those involved. For New Delhi, this language carries particular importance because BRICS functions through consensus and includes countries whose strategic relationships with Pakistan have historically complicated India's diplomatic efforts.
Yet India should avoid viewing the declaration merely as a diplomatic trophy. The real challenge begins after the summit. A declaration can establish principles, but it cannot by itself create security, investment, trade or technological cooperation. The success of India's BRICS presidency will ultimately be judged by implementation.
This is especially important because BRICS is becoming larger and more politically diverse. Expansion increases its economic and diplomatic weight, but it also makes consensus more difficult. The grouping cannot realistically be expected to behave like a traditional military or political alliance. Its members have different security priorities, economic models and relationships with the United States and Europe.
India's decision to prevent BRICS from becoming an explicitly anti-Western bloc is therefore strategically sensible. New Delhi has repeatedly demonstrated that strategic autonomy does not mean choosing one camp against another. India can cooperate with Russia on defence and energy, maintain partnerships with the United States and Europe, engage China economically while managing security competition, and simultaneously develop relationships with countries across West Asia and the Global South.
The cautious improvement in India-China engagement also deserves attention. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed improving bilateral ties, business and transport links, while India stressed that peace along the border remains fundamental to a stable relationship. This should not be mistaken for the disappearance of strategic differences. The border question, trade imbalance and supply-chain concerns remain serious issues. Dialogue is useful precisely because competition needs management, not denial.
For India, the economic dimension of BRICS may ultimately matter more than summit symbolism. The grouping has discussed greater use of local currencies, cross-border payment mechanisms, investment cooperation and reforms of global financial institutions. But these ideas will have value only if businesses, exporters, investors and smaller enterprises can actually use them.
India should therefore push BRICS towards practical cooperation in digital payments, technology, critical minerals, energy security, food security, healthcare, artificial intelligence and resilient supply chains. The objective should not be to construct a parallel global system overnight, but to create additional choices for emerging economies.
There is also a larger geopolitical opportunity. BRICS can become a platform through which the Global South moves from being primarily a recipient of global decisions to becoming a participant in shaping them. But leadership of the Global South cannot be based only on rhetoric. It requires development finance, technology access, market opportunities, infrastructure partnerships and institutional reforms that produce measurable benefits.
India's greatest strength within BRICS is perhaps its ability to communicate across geopolitical divides. It has relationships with Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Gulf capitals, Europe and developing economies. This gives New Delhi a potentially valuable role as a bridge-builder. But being a bridge also carries risks. India must ensure that dialogue with one power does not compromise its interests with another.
The next challenge will be maintaining this balance after India's BRICS chairmanship ends. China will take over the chair in 2027, giving Beijing an important opportunity to influence the group's agenda. India must therefore ensure that the mechanisms created during its presidency are institutionalised rather than remaining dependent on one summit or one chairmanship.
The New Delhi Summit has shown that India can bring contradictory forces into one diplomatic framework. The next test is much harder: converting political consensus into sustained cooperation.
For India, the objective should not be to make BRICS a replacement for existing global institutions or alliances. It should be to make BRICS useful, credible and practical. Strategic autonomy is strongest when it expands India's options rather than narrowing them.
The lesson from New Delhi is clear. In a fragmented world, diplomacy is not about choosing sides at every turn. It is about protecting national interests while keeping channels of cooperation open. India has demonstrated that it can manage contradictions. Now it must demonstrate that it can turn that diplomatic balancing act into tangible outcomes for security, trade, technology and development.
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