Under the slogan “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability,” India assumes the BRICS presidency in 2026. This is an event that should be closely observed as it will test a reassuring assumption that many observers have about the organisation. It is assumed that BRICS speaks in unison when it comes to economic cooperation, with a shared goal of overthrowing the dollar and creating an alternative to the Bretton Woods system. The best illustration of why such notion is inaccurate is India’s own performance inside BRICS.

First, consider the money issue, which best illustrates the bloc’s internal divide. Russia and China have periodically floated the idea of a common BRICS currency, and even Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has mentioned it from time to time, though with less enthusiasm each year. India has never entertained this idea. Its authorities take care to distinguish between two things that are sometimes confused: de-dollarization, a political initiative meant to weaken the dollar’s hegemony, and trading in local currencies, which India is pleased to do since it’s easier and less expensive. That is not a difference in semantics. It allows India to sign up to the New Development Bank’s plan to lend a larger share of its portfolio (around a third under its current strategy) in members’ own currencies, without signing up to a broader anti-Western monetary agenda that would sit awkwardly alongside its trade relationships with the US, the EU, and Japan.

This is the same precept that framed India’s original entry into BRICS in 2009: use the platform, don’t get captured by it. China’s interest in BRICS has always been more structural – a vehicle for building alternatives to a US-led order it has real cause to resent, given how directly it competes with Washington. India’s interest is narrower and more tactical. BRICS gives it a voice in discussions about IMF and World Bank reform, access to NDB financing for infrastructure, and, not incidentally, a close-up view of China from inside the tent rather than outside it. The two countries are in the same room for almost opposite reasons, and that divide has only become more apparent under tariff pressure, not less.

In August 2025, Washington took an unprecedented step in its economic engagement with India, imposing an additional 25 percent tariff on top of an existing 25 percent duty and linking the measure to India’s continued purchase of Russian oil. For a country that had spent nearly three decades steadily building its strategic partnership with the United States, the move was significant and raised questions about the future direction of economic relations.

India’s response, however, was measured rather than confrontational. Instead of escalating tensions, New Delhi appeared to focus on expanding its economic and diplomatic options. Within months, India accelerated trade engagement with partners such as the United Kingdom, Oman, and New Zealand, while continuing negotiations with several others.

At the same time, India cautiously sought to ease tensions and maintain dialogue with China, despite continuing strategic differences. This was not a strategic realignment but an expression of diplomatic pragmatism.

The broader message was clear: India was not moving away from the United States, but reinforcing its strategic autonomy through greater diversification. In an increasingly uncertain global environment, New Delhi appears determined to maintain strong partnerships while ensuring that its economic and strategic choices remain broad, balanced, and independent.

Trump’s tariffs and his explicit threats of further penalties against any country seen as aligning with BRICS’s “anti-American” positions put India’s long-standing multi-alignment strategy to its sharpest test yet. The outcomes have been inconsistent yet enlightening. In addition to maintaining trade negotiations with Washington, India has not reacted in the same kind. At the same time, it has become closer to Beijing; border checks have decreased, direct flights have resumed, and trade ministers have met for the first time in years. This does not appear to be a nation taking sides. It appears to be a nation simultaneously hedging in both directions, which is precisely what “strategic autonomy” was always intended to represent in actuality as opposed to rhetoric.

New Development Bank remains the greatest tangible measure of whether any of this is more than rhetoric. It dispensed around $21 billion since opening in 2015, and approved approx. $39 billion in projects, which is a significant amount but still a small portion of what the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank transfer annually. According to That tolerance has been building over time. According to the BRICS Leaders’ Declaration of 2012, India’s own finance ministry initially commissioned a joint working group to investigate a BRICS-led lender specifically designed to mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in developing economies. For that mission to become a real, operational bank, three more years were needed. The NDB’s goal in 2026 is to finally deliver at scale on a promise that predates the current urgency around de-dollarization by over 10 years, rather than reinventing itself as something more radical in light of that founding brief.

Under India’s presidency, the NDB is more likely to become more practical than more ideological where there will be more participation, local currency loans, and accelerated project approval rather than turning into a counter-IMF. This aligns with India’s strategy throughout its presidential planning: climate finance, digital public infrastructure as an exportable model, and institutional transformation are presented as enhancements to the current global system rather than as a rejection of it. In contrast to Beijing and Moscow, India has been cautious to portray its BRICS chairmanship as a bridge to the West rather than a barricade against it.

This does not imply that India’s balancing act is steady. The tariff shock showed how rapidly things can change amid multi-alignment, and it’s unclear how long India can continue to grow its trade with both blocs before one of them pressures it to choose. However, if 2026 has shown anything so far, it is that India’s interpretation of BRICS economic cooperation is purposefully more limited than the bloc’s more maximalist language implies; it is a practical wager on multiple markets and reformed institutions rather than an attempt to completely replace the dollar or the West. More than any statement made during a summit, that moderation could be India’s true contribution to the future of BRICS.