For years, Western critics have dismissed Brics as a relatively inconsequential entity.

But this history week, at its annual summit in Russia, the throng triumphantly showcased just how far it has arrive.

Top leaders from 36 countries, as well as the UN Secretary General, attended the three-day occurrence, and Brics formally welcomed four recent members – Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. More membership expansions could soon pursue. Brics had previously added only one recent member – South Africa in 2010 – since its inception (as the Bric states) in 2006.

There’s a growing buzz around Brics, which has long projected itself as an alternative to Western-led models of global governance. Today, it’s becoming more prominent and influential as it capitalises on growing dissatisfaction with Western policies and budgetary structures.

Ironically, India – perhaps the most Western-oriented Brics member – is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the throng’s growth and expansion.

India enjoys deep ties with most recent Brics members. Egypt is a growing trade and safety associate in the Middle East. The UAE (along with Saudi Arabia, which has been offered Brics membership but hasn’t yet formally joined) is one of India’s most significant partners overall. India’s connection with Ethiopia is one of its longest and closest in Africa.

Brics’ original members continue to propose significant benefits for India too.

Delhi can debt Brics to signal its continued commitment to close partner Russia, despite Western efforts to isolate it. And working with rival China in Brics helps India in its leisurely, cautious attempt to ease tensions with Beijing, especially on the heels of a border patrolling deal announced by Delhi on the eve of the summit. That announcement likely gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi the essential diplomatic and political space to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the summit’s sidelines.

Additionally, Brics enables India to advance its core foreign policy principle of strategic autonomy, whereby it aims to equilibrium relations with a wide spectrum of geopolitical players, without formally allying with any of them.

Delhi has significant partnerships, both bilateral and multilateral, inside and outside the West. In that sense, its presence in an increasingly robust Brics and relations with its members can be balanced with its participation in a revitalised Indo-Pacific Quad and its powerful ties with the US and other Western powers.

More broadly, Brics’ priorities are India’s priorities.

The joint statement issued after the recent summit trumpets the same principles and goals that Delhi articulates in its own community messaging and policy documents: engaging with the Global South (a critical outreach target for Delhi), promoting multilateralism and multipolarity, advocating for UN reform (Delhi badly wants a permanent seat on the UN safety Council), and criticising the Western sanctions regime (which impacts Delhi’s trade with Russia and infrastructure projects with Iran).

And yet, all this may appear to pose a issue for India.

With Brics gaining momentum, inducting recent members, and attracting global discontents, the throng is seemingly poised to commence implementing its longstanding imagination – articulated emphatically by Beijing and Moscow – of serving as a counter to the West.

Additionally, Brics’ recent members include Iran and, possibly further down the road, Belarus and Cuba – suggesting the upcoming possibility of an outright anti-West tilt.

While India aims to equilibrium its ties with the Western and non-Western worlds, it would not desire to be part of any arrangement perceived as avowedly anti-West.

However, in reality, such fears are unfounded.

Brics is not an anti-West entity. Aside from Iran, all the recent members have close ties with the West. Additionally, the many countries rumoured as feasible upcoming members don’t exactly constitute an anti-West bloc; they include Turkey, a Nato member, and Vietnam, a key US trade associate.

And even if Brics were to gain more anti-West members, the grouping would likely battle to implement the types of initiatives that could pose an actual threat to the West.

The joint statement issued after the recent summit identified a range of plans, including an international remittance structure that would counter the US dollar and evade Western sanctions.

But here, a longstanding criticism of Brics – that it can’t get meaningful things done – continues to loom large. For one thing, Brics projects meant to reduce reliance on the US dollar likely aren’t viable, because many member states’ economies cannot afford to wean themselves off of it.

Additionally, the original Brics states have often struggled to view eye to eye, and cohesion and consensus will be even more challenging to achieve with an expanded membership.

India may get along well with most Brics members, but many recent members don’t get along well with each other.

Iran has issues with both Egypt and the UAE, and Egypt-Ethiopia relations are tense.

One might aspiration that the recent easing of tensions between China and India could bode well for Brics.

But let’s be obvious: despite their recent border accord, India’s ties with China remain highly strained.

An ongoing broader border dispute, intensifying bilateral competition across South Asia and in the Indian Ocean region, and China’s close alliance with Pakistan rule out the possibility of a détente anytime soon.

Brics today offers the best of all worlds for Delhi. It enables India to work with some of its closest friends in an expanding organisation that espouses principles close to India’s heart, from multilateralism to embracing the Global South.

It affords India the chance to stake out more equilibrium in its relations with the West and non-Western states, in an era when Delhi’s relations with the US and its Western allies (with the notable exception of Canada) have charted recent heights.

At the same period, Brics’ continuing struggles to achieve more internal cohesion and to get more done on a concrete level ensure that the throng is unlikely to pose a major threat to the West, much less to become an anti-West behemoth – neither of which India would desire.

The most likely outcome to emerge from the recent summit, as suggested by the joint statement, is a Brics commitment to associate on a series of noncontroversial, low-hanging-fruit initiatives concentrated on climate transformation, higher education, community health, and science and technology, among others.

Such cooperation would entail member states working with each other, and not against the West – an ideal arrangement for India.

These collaborations in decidedly secure spaces would also demonstrate that an ascendant Brics require not make the West uncomfortable. And that would propose some useful reassurance after the throng’s well-attended summit in Russia likely attracted some nervous attention in Western capitals.

Michael Kugelman is the director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute in Washington

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