India’s interest lies not in replacing one centre of power with another, but in building an international system in which countries have more choices and the confidence to use them.
The question after New Delhi
The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi has moved the debate around the grouping beyond the familiar question of whether it can challenge the United States. The more consequential question is whether BRICS can build an alternative international architecture that countries are willing to trust. The distinction matters.
BRICS already carries substantial economic weight. Intra-BRICS merchandise trade reached US$1.17 trillion in 2024, more than thirteen times its 2003 level of US $84 billion. Yet the grouping has stopped short of adopting a common currency. Instead, the New Delhi Declaration supports greater use of local currencies, interoperability of payment and messaging systems, and continued technical work on cross-border settlement, while emphasizing that there is no one-size fits all approach and that national priorities must be respected.
That caution is well founded. Local-currency trade does give countries more control over their economies, reduce transaction costs, lower exposure to exchange rate risks and encourage regional cooperation, but rather currency volatility, differences in economic structures and limited global acceptance of local currencies are likely to slow progress, and the dollar is unlikely to be displaced in the near term. Building an alternative settlement system also requires the legal frameworks of member states to be harmonized, given differing national rules on permissible payment methods and varying sanctions exposure: legal alignment must proceed in parallel with, or ahead of, the technological build out.
This is an important distinction for India. A more diversified financial system can reduce vulnerabilities created by excessive dependence on any single currency or infrastructure. But India’s strategic autonomy cannot mean replacing dependence on one major power with dependence on another. There is settled view in Delhi that elevating the currencies of countries with adversarial relations with India as dollar alternatives is not in India’s interest, and that India is neither working to undermine the dollar nor seeking to undermine the US presence in global politics. India’s membership of forums the United States is not part of which includes BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, has been read in Washington as affording access through a partner it can reasonably count on not to pursue de-dollarization.
The central issue, therefore is not whether BRICS can build an alternative to the dollar. It is whether countries will have sufficient confidence in the alternative to use it for long-term economic and strategic relationships.
Trust is infrastructure
The Future of International Cooperation Report 2026 offers a useful analytical starting point by defining trust as “the belief that actors will reliably uphold shared values and principles.” It identifies eight principles that must be adhered to if trust is to be rebuilt on integrity, transparency, legitimacy, effectiveness, reciprocity, collaboration, accountability and cooperation. It is organised around and four cross-cutting imperatives, with four further principles, of cooperation, collaboration, accountability and reciprocity, emphasized on a regional level. Therefore, Building confidence in the public sector through transparency is treated as a critical component of trust.
This aligns with a substantial body of evidence. Social trust operates as an antecedent of both national and international legitimacy beliefs. And the perceived legitimacy of an international organisation rests substantially on its capacity to deliver, alongside citizens’ general confidence in political institutions, rather than on procedural democracy in isolation.
Here lies the gap that BRICS must confront. The grouping does not lack declarations; the New Delhi Declaration itself contains commitments to mutual respect, sovereign equality, openness, inclusiveness, collaboration and consensus. The question is whether those principles can become institutional behavior.
Trust is tested not when an agreement is signed, but when circumstances change.
A twenty-year infrastructure contract, energy agreement, technology partnership or payment arrangement must survive changes in governments, currencies, sanctions, regimes, security environments and commercial conditions. This requires agreements that are neither rigid not politically disposable. The legal scholarship points to a workable design. Renegotiation and adaptation clauses are standard in long-term investment agreements precisely so that parties can recover contractual equilibrium when unexpected political, legal, economic or geological events occur. And partial scope renegotiation which tend to limit which subject matter may not be reopened, allows states to conclude agreements today while constraining the possibility of opportunism tomorrow. Investment treaty law, more broadly turns on a permanent tension between stability, which nurtures predictability, and flexibility, which keeps rules aligned with changing circumstances, mechanism of both ‘voice’ and ‘exit’ exist, but are rarely used and are geared to stability.
The Future of International Cooperation Report 2026 makes a closely related argument at the regional level, and its institutional detail is more useful than its headline framing. Regional security arrangements, its notes, often lack binding legal obligations, credible compliance mechanisms and effective dispute resolution precisely because governments prioritize political flexibility which can be a weaking deterrence when the incentives to defect outweigh the costs of violation. Its recommendation is to convert political declarations and memoranda into ratified protocols with mandatory dispute-resolution clauses, pointing to bilateral investment treaties and the WTO-dispute settlement system as models in which binding mechanisms increase the credibility of commitments. It also cites the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials, whose reciprocal inspections of nuclear facilities helped transform a longstanding potential nuclear rivalry into regional cooperative security, and separately, the value of independent, adequately resourced technical secretariats such as ECOWAS’s Observation and Monitoring Centre and the AU’s Continental Early Warning System. On the trade side, its argument is that stronger regional and inter-regional agreements rebuild trust by harmonizing rules of origin, promoting mutual recognition, streamlining customs and reducing compliance costs.
This provides the foundation for a BRICS trust architecture, one in which flexibility means that contracts can adapt to changing circumstances, not that a more powerful party can unilaterally rewrite the terms.
The problem therefore in not disagreement. It is predictability.
China and Russia have articulated legitimate criticisms of aspects of the US-led order. Concerns about the concentration of financial power, sanctions, unequal representation in global institutions and vulnerabilities associated with dollar dependence resonate across much of the Global South. India should not dismiss them. But criticism of an existing system does not automatically create confidence in an alternative. Analysts note that political heterogeneity, strategic rivalries and normative contradictions constrain BRICS + cohesion and its capacity to articulate a coherent alternative to the Western-led order. The New Delhi Declaration itself acknowledges the need for greater transparency and accountability in governance, while its financial provisions call for cooperation that respects national priorities.
Disagreement is normal in international politics. The challenge is whether partners can predict what happens when disagreement becomes serious.
The India – China test
India-China economic relations illustrate both the opportunity and the difficulty. There continues to be considerable stress in the relationship, with large numbers of forces on both sides of the border, there has been disengagement at a few points in Ladakh, but no large-scale demobilization, and India exports still struggle to access Chinese markets. The deficit itself is structural rather than transient, rooted in a compositional imbalance: India depends heavily on China for high-value capital goods and intermediate products, while its exports are concentrated in lower-value goods.
At their September 2026 meeting in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasized mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest, while also stressing peace and tranquility along the border and the need to address structural trade imbalances and achieve predictable market access.
That formulation is significant beyond the bilateral relationship. Mutual sensitivity is not weakness, it is a mechanism through which power becomes acceptable. For many Asian states, diplomacy is not merely about economic benefit, it is also about dignity, reciprocity and maintaining room for maneuver. A major power can offer investment, technology, and market access and still generate a hedging if its partners believe that economic dependence may eventually constrain their political choices.
That logic is visible across the Indo-Pacific, where countries increasingly seek relationships with multiple powers rather than permanent alignment with one. India’s engagement with BRICS, the QUAD, the SCO, the United States, Russia, Europe, and ASEAN reflect a strategy of hedging that preserves strategic autonomy. India’s engagement through the BRICS, SCO and G20, alongside increased trade with China and Russia, is best read in these terms. Its dual membership of the QUAD and BRICS is a deliberate application of multi-alignment, allowing India to benefit from both platforms while treating neither as an exclusive commitment. India sees groupings such as BRICS as reflecting growing multipolarity rather than an anti-American blocs, and engages with all major frameworks because no single forum can deliver its interests alone.
Multipolarity should mean multiple choices, not multiple dependencies.
What transparency does and does not require
Strategic transparency is often assumed to be a concession. It is better understood as a condition of predictability. On 14 September, US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink publicly acknowledged that the United States has deployed “on orbit space control weapons” capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile action, without disclosing their type, number or operational details.
The announcement does not make US policy benign or trustworthy, and disclosure is not the same as transparency. But it demonstrates a principal BRICS needs to consider. A major power can disclose the existence of a sensitive capability while retaining necessary operational secrecy. Space governance offers a working model. A transparency measure requiring notification of the transfer of kinetic energy to an object in Earth orbit would ease tensions, increase trust, make it harder to develop anti-satellite weapons surreptitiously and help differentiate commercial and civil activity from military activity. Such confidence building measures support predictability and reduce the risk of misperception, functioning as baseline expectations of responsible conduct even without binding treaty obligations.
The objective should not be to make China, Russia, India or any other member completely transparent. It should be to make BRICS institutions predictable even when member states are not. That is not an idealistic proposition since politicized institutions tend to respond to contestation with greater formal transparency as a move to increase legitimacy.
A BRICS Trust and Reliability Framework
India should therefore propose a BRICS Trust, Transparency and Strategic Reliability Framework with five components.
First, contractual reliability. Long-term BRICS supported agreements should contain review, amendment, arbitration and exit provisions that prevent unilateral alteration while permitting legitimate adaptation, which can help in converting declarations into ratified protocols with mandatory dispute-resolution clauses, the design the Future of International Cooperation Report 2026 identifies as the difference between political flexibility and credible commitment.
Second, financial transparency. Local-currency and digital payment systems should have transparent governance, clear data rules and safeguards against disproportionate control by any one member. Legal harmonization, as the design of BRICS Pay illustrates, cannot follow the infrastructure, it must accompany it.
Third, reciprocity. Integration should be measured by market access and structural trade imbalances not headline volumes. Reciprocity is where regional arrangements have an advantage over global ones, closer relationships and shared experience allow sates to exchange tangible, matched concessions.
Fourth, strategic predictability. Members should establish consultation mechanisms for policy changes affecting critical infrastructure, technology, financial systems, space and security supported by independent monitoring and transparent reporting on implementation rather than by declaration alone.
Fifth, freedom of choice. Participation in BRICS economic mechanisms should not require political alignment against non-BRICS countries. This is the principle that matters most to India as its objective should not be a post-American order or a China led order, but a system in which no single power is indispensable. The concept of multiplexity captures this as an order of complex interconnectedness in which non-Western agency constrains the concentration of power and groupings function as decentered zones of completion rather than rival blocs each revolving around a single pole.
Conclusion
BRICS has the material foundations to become an important pillar of a more multipolar international system. Its trade has expanded rapidly, its institutions are developing, the New Delhi summit has moved practical discussions on local currencies and payment interoperability forward. But material capability is only one component of international influence. The deeper question is whether BRICS can generate confidence among countries that are not willing to exchange one dependency for another.
China and Russia have contributed significantly to the debate about alternatives to the existing order. The United States despite its own contradictions, also possesses institutional mechanisms that make many of its policies publicly visible and contestable. The appropriate Indian response is neither to romanticize one model not to dismiss the other, it is to institutionalize choice.
This is where the Future of International Cooperation Report 2026 is most useful and where it stops short. Its frame is the restoration of trust and institutions that already exist like the United Nations, regional organisations, the follow through to the Pact for the Future. BRICS settlement infrastructure presents the inverse problem. There is no institution whose trust can be restored, because the institution has not yet been built. Trust has to be constructed before the architecture and not after it. That reversal ins the contribution this argument makes which is the sequencing of trust and institution building, and the contractual design that makes the sequencing credible.
Before building an alternative currency architecture, build an architecture of trust. Before asking countries to depend on new institutions, make those institutions dependable.
India’s contribution to a multipolar world needs not be choosing which great power replaces another. It can be something more ambitious, a system in which countries have the freedom to choose and the confidence that choosing cooperation will not cost them their autonomy.
References:
Books and Book Chapters:
Doucet, Gilles. “A Proposed Transparency Measure as a Step Toward Space Arms Control.” In War and Peace in Outer Space: Law, Policy, and Ethics, edited by Cassandra Steer and Matthew Hersch, 247–264. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197548684.003.0011.
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles:
Meyer, Timothy, and Tae Jung Park. “Renegotiating International Investment Law.” Journal of International Economic Law 21, no. 3 (2018): 655–679. https://doi.org/10.1093/jiel/jgy029.
Dellmuth, Lisa Maria, and Jonas Tallberg. “Why National and International Legitimacy Beliefs Are Linked: Social Trust as an Antecedent Factor.” The Review of International Organizations 15 (2020): 311–337. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-018-9339-y.
Zürn, Michael. “The Politicization of World Politics and Its Effects: Eight Propositions.” European Political Science Review 6, no. 1 (2014): 47–71. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773912000276.
Vinodan, C., and Anju Lis Kurian. “Strategic Autonomy and India’s Hedging Policies in the Indo-Pacific.” Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 11, no. 4 (2024): 475–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/23477970241282095.
Delalić, Selma, and Sumka Bučan. “The BRICS+ and the Changing Global Governance Architecture.” Journal of Economic and Social Studies 9, no. 2 (2025): 25–54. https://doi.org/10.14706/JECOSS18922.
Shakhnazarov, Beniamin. “BRICS Pay as the BRICS Payment System in the Legal Framework for Transactions in BRICS Countries.” Kutafin Law Review 12, no. 3 (2025): 493–511. https://doi.org/10.17803/2713-0533.2025.3.33.493-511.
Sowmya N., and T. Rajendra Prasad. “Analysis of India’s Trade Deficit with China: Structural Drivers, Econometric Assessment, and Strategic Policy Responses.” International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research 10, no. 10 (October 2025): 5250–5265. https://doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2025.v10i10.044.
Pandey, Himanshu, and Dharmendra Yadav. “Realism, Strategic Autonomy, and Multi-Alignment: Analyzing India’s Engagement with QUAD and BRICS in a Multipolar World Order.” International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research 7, no. 6 (2025). https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.63289.
Upadhyaya, Vikrant, and Kumud Ranjan. “India’s Indo-Pacific Strategy: A Masterclass in Strategic Balancing.” Knowledgeable Research: A Multidisciplinary Journal 4, no. 2 (2025): 86–89. https://doi.org/10.57067/a3cwd594.
Tabassum, Kareema. “De-Dollarisation and the Rise of Local Currency Trade: A Critical Look at BRICS Economies.” EPRA International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 12, no. 3 (2026). https://doi.org/10.36713/epra26644.
Roy, Indrajit. “Asserting Southern Agency: The Moralistic Realism of Multiplexity.” International Affairs 102, no. 2 (2026): 337–362. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiag001.
Working Papers / Research Papers:
Villanueva, Christian. “Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures (TCBMs) in Space Governance: Normative Stability and Responsible State Practice in a Multi-Actor Orbital Environment.” State Governance for an Emerging Space Nation, Working Paper No. 13. Zenodo, February 13, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18628235.
Policy / Think-Tank Publications:
Pulipaka, Sanjay, and Cauvery Ganapathy. “Rupture in the India-U.S. Relationship: An Indian Perspective.” Focus Asia. Institute for Security and Development Policy, November 28, 2025. https://www.isdp.eu/publication/rupture-in-the-india-u-s-relationship-an-indian-perspective/.
Spherical Insights. “BRICS: Anti-Western Bloc or Opportunity for the Global South?” Spherical Insights, September 2026. Spherical Insights article https://www.sphericalinsights.com/blogs/brics-anti-western-bloc-or-opportunity-for-the-global-south
- Korean / Korea Science Article:
Yoon, Joo-Young. “A Study on the Renegotiation and Adaptation of International Long Term Commercial Contracts: Focusing on the Contracts without the Renegotiating Clauses.” [Journal title, volume, issue, and pages to be confirmed]. Korea Science. https://koreascience.kr/article/JAKO202033263817322.page.
