BRICS in Transition: India's Strategic Calculus in a Changing Global Order

This paper analyses India’s strategic engagement in the BRICS over the past decade. During this period, the global power structure has undergone significant reconfiguration, characterized by a transition toward multipolarity, heightened multilateral frictions, and intensified strategic competition among major powers. The central argument of the paper is that India’s engagement with BRICS has shifted from a predominantly peripheral and development-oriented approach, focused on economic cooperation and South-South solidarity, to a more deliberate and multifaceted strategic calculus. This evolution seeks to enhance India’s geopolitical footprint, promote multipolarity, advance institutional reforms in global governance, and safeguard strategic autonomy amid an increasingly contested international order. India strategic calculus of the BRICS aims at establishing its presence in a world increasingly multipolar, and also towards managing the power asymmetry. The strategic calculus that India has vis-a-vis BRICS is to assert its role in a world that is becoming multipolar and manage power asymmetries. It practices a balancing act in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific by using BRICS as a diplomatic field and retaliation to enforce the interests of the Global South. One of the parts of the Indian economic diplomacy is multi-dimensional trade, investment, and financial institutions, such as the New Development Bank. At the same time, India has assumed a restrained proactive move towards de-dollarisation of some of its transactions hence strengthening strong supply chains and incorporating some other economies in global value chain through practical and diversified alliances. The paper outlines four key thematic arenas, which are geopolitical positioning, economic cooperation, institutional reform, and normative diplomacy, highlighting the critical issues, including the presence of China in BRICS, and the internal heterogeneity of member interests. The paper is concluded by argument that the BRICS approach by India is not only a continuation of its multilateralism over the years, but also a novel way of seeking autonomy in its strategy in an international system that is full of contours. The strategic calculus that India has vis-a-vis BRICS is to prove its existence in a world that is becoming multipolar and manage power asymmetries. It practices a balancing act in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific by using BRICS as a diplomatic field and a retaliation to enforce the interests of the Global South. One of the parts of the Indian economic diplomacy is multi- dimensional trade, investment, and financial institutions, such as the New Development Bank. At the same time, India has assumed a restrained proactive move towards de-dollarisation of some of its transactions hence strengthening strong supply chains and incorporating some other economies in global value chain through practical and diversified alliances. The report has made the conclusion that the BRICS strategy of India is not only the extension of its centuries-old approach to multilateralism, but also a new way of strategic independence in the international system full of changing contours.