India hosted leaders from the 11-member bloc at a moment when the international system is undergoing a profound transition. Trade is increasingly being shaped by geopolitical considerations, supply chains are being reconsidered, technology is becoming a strategic asset, and developing countries are demanding a greater voice in institutions that still reflect an older distribution of global power. The summit ended with the adoption of the New Delhi Declaration, a 140-paragraph document covering finance, trade, global governance, technology, health, agriculture, energy, climate, terrorism and international conflicts. The breadth of the document itself is significant: BRICS is increasingly functioning as a platform for cooperation across multiple areas rather than as a grouping built around a single economic objective. For India, however, the summit was also about something more fundamental.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi argued that countries of the Global South have too often been affected by decisions in which they have had insufficient representation. India therefore pushed for a system in which emerging economies are not merely participants in the international order but increasingly rule-shapers. That ambition was reflected in the declaration's call for greater representation of emerging and developing economies in global institutions, including reform of the United Nations Security Council and international financial institutions.
The symbolism surrounding the summit reinforced the broader message. BRICS leaders jointly planted banyan saplings in New Delhi, while India's chairship placed resilience and sustainability alongside innovation and cooperation. The message was clear: India was presenting BRICS not simply as an alternative political bloc, but as part of the architecture of an increasingly multipolar world.
The Financial Shift: Moving Beyond Dollar Dependence
The most consequential economic development from New Delhi may be one that does not produce a dramatic headline. There was no announcement of a common BRICS currency. But there was a concrete movement towards something that may, over time, prove more practical: making it easier for BRICS countries to trade and invest using their own currencies and payment systems.
The New Delhi Declaration welcomed the work of the BRICS Payment Task Force on cross-border payment mechanisms, including the study of interoperability between payment and messaging systems. It also recognised discussions around trade settlements and investment using BRICS local currencies. That distinction matters.
De-dollarisation does not necessarily require countries to agree on one replacement currency. It can begin much more gradually. An Indian company does not necessarily need dollars to trade with a Russian company. A Brazilian company does not necessarily need dollars to trade with an Indian company. A Chinese company does not necessarily need dollars for every transaction with another BRICS economy. If payment systems become interoperable and local currencies become easier to settle, the dollar stops being an automatic intermediary in every transaction. That is the strategic significance of what New Delhi advanced.
India has also brought its own experience into this discussion. UPI has demonstrated how digital public infrastructure can transform domestic payments at extraordinary scale, and India has consistently advocated greater international connectivity between national payment systems. The declaration also supported India's proposal for a BRICS Risk Lab at GIFT City, while discussions continued on strengthening financial resilience and local-currency financing through the New Development Bank. None of this means the dollar disappears tomorrow. It means something more fundamental is being constructed: choice. And that may ultimately be how financial dependence changes, not through one dramatic announcement, but through the accumulation of alternative payment routes, settlement mechanisms, currencies and institutions. The New Delhi summit therefore represents a meaningful step in that direction.
BRICS Was Never Just About Money
Reducing the summit to de-dollarisation would actually understate what India accomplished. The New Delhi agenda stretched from artificial intelligence to infectious diseases, from agriculture to critical minerals, from energy security to maritime cooperation. On AI, BRICS committed itself to implementing the group's framework for global AI governance while emphasising inclusivity and the interests of developing countries. This is particularly important for India, which has sought to position itself as a bridge between technological innovation and the development needs of the Global South.
Health was another major area. India proposed stronger cooperation on disease surveillance and an early-warning system for infectious diseases. The summit also advanced cooperation in areas including digital health, vaccine research and other health technologies. Agriculture received substantial attention as well, with initiatives around agroecology, regenerative agriculture and digital agriculture, reflecting the reality that food security and climate resilience are increasingly interconnected. There was also a distinctly Indian contribution to maritime cooperation.
Modi proposed a Seafarers' Emergency Support Network, an initiative with particular relevance to India given the country's large contribution to the global trained seafarer workforce. The wider agenda included energy security, supply-chain resilience, critical minerals, startups, skills, tourism, climate action and development finance. This matters because it reveals what India wanted BRICS to become. Not merely a mechanism for criticising existing institutions. A mechanism for building new cooperation among countries that represent a substantial part of the developing world. That is a much more ambitious project.
The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi went far beyond finance, bringing together an expanded Global South agenda spanning local-currency trade, digital payments, AI, health, energy, food security, global governance and development. For India, the summit was an opportunity to turn strategic autonomy into a broader platform for a more multipolar world.
By Geopolitical Analysis Desk, The Centre
14 September 2026 • 09:30 PM IST • 7 min read
When the leaders of the expanded BRICS gathered in New Delhi on September 12–13, the agenda was considerably larger than the traditional idea of BRICS as an economic grouping.
India's Diplomatic Moment
Perhaps India's most important achievement in New Delhi was not contained in any single paragraph of the declaration. It was the fact that consensus was achieved at all. BRICS has become considerably more diverse.
India and China remain strategic competitors even as their bilateral relationship has begun to stabilise. Iran and the Gulf states have their own complicated relationships. Russia's geopolitical position is very different from India's. Brazil and South Africa have their own priorities. The expanded membership inevitably brings different economic and political interests into the same room. Yet the leaders produced a common declaration.
Reports indicated that negotiations were particularly difficult around West Asia, including differences involving Iran and the UAE, with Indian diplomacy playing an important role in bridging positions.
That is where India's particular diplomatic approach becomes important. New Delhi did not attempt to turn BRICS into an organisation requiring its members to agree on every geopolitical question. Instead, India tried to create areas of convergence despite disagreement. That was visible in the meetings around the summit as well.
Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. India's ability to maintain dialogue with countries occupying very different positions in the international system is central to its concept of strategic autonomy. This is not neutrality. Nor is it alignment with one camp against another. It is the proposition that India should have relationships and therefore strategic choices, across multiple centres of power. That approach was on display throughout the summit. And it explains why the New Delhi BRICS meeting matters beyond BRICS itself. India demonstrated that it can engage simultaneously with different poles of the emerging international system without reducing its foreign policy to choosing one side.
From Strategic Autonomy to a Multipolar Future
The most important question emerging from New Delhi is therefore not whether BRICS has suddenly created a new world order. It has not. Nor was that ever likely to happen in two days. The significance lies in the direction of travel. The summit brought together several developments that, taken individually, might appear incremental:
local-currency trade;
cross-border payment interoperability;
development finance;
digital infrastructure;
AI cooperation;
critical-mineral cooperation;
health networks;
food and energy security;
greater representation for developing countries;
and reform of global institutions.
Taken together, they represent something larger. An effort to give emerging economies more capacity to act collectively. This is where India's vision of a multipolar world becomes important. A multipolar system does not necessarily mean replacing one dominant power with another. It means increasing the number of countries and institutions capable of shaping outcomes. For India, that means strategic autonomy not merely as a diplomatic principle but increasingly as an economic and technological capability.
A country has greater strategic autonomy when it can trade through multiple routes, access multiple sources of capital and energy, maintain relationships with multiple powers, build its own technological capabilities and participate in institutions where its interests are represented. That is why the financial component of BRICS matters so much. De-dollarisation, in its most practical form, is about expanding choices. The movement towards local currencies does not require BRICS to announce a common currency. It does not even require every member to abandon the dollar. It simply creates the possibility that a growing share of trade can be conducted without the dollar being the unavoidable bridge between two economies. That is a gradual process, but gradual does not mean insignificant.
The Centre's View
The New Delhi Summit should be understood as an important moment in India's effort to help shape a more multipolar international system. India did not attempt to make BRICS an anti-Western alliance. It did something more strategically useful: it expanded the space in which emerging economies can cooperate without requiring them to share identical political interests. The financial agenda is particularly significant. Every new local-currency settlement, every interoperable payment link and every institution capable of financing trade and investment outside traditional channels adds another piece to a more diversified global financial system.
The same principle applies beyond finance. AI. Health. Agriculture. Energy. Critical minerals. Maritime security. Development finance. Global governance. The ambition is no longer simply to demand a seat at the table. It is to help build more tables. And New Delhi showed that India increasingly wants to be one of the countries designing them. The BRICS chairship now passes to China. But the framework India leaves behind is considerably broader than the one it inherited.
The summit did not announce the arrival of a new world order. It demonstrated that the world is already becoming more multipolar and that India intends to help shape what comes next.
