To understand the significance of the recent 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, India, we must understand the Global North and Global South Framework. Fundamentally, this framework is a broad political and economic term that reflects the world's unequal power dynamics and the historical distribution of power.
The more industrialised, high-income, and historically powerful economies, like the USA, Canada, most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel, are referred to as the Global North. The developing and emerging economies across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, most of Asia, the Middle East, and the Pacific are broadly referred to as the Global South. This classification is not about their geographical location, north or South of the equator; it is a framework of wealth, power, history, and representation. The north-south framework gained prominence as attention to widening disparities across these countries grew.
In 2006, BRICS began as a dialogue between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It held its first meeting in Russia in 2009, and since then, the members have convened for a summit once a year on a rotating basis. India hosted the recent BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, 2026. Originally, BRICS consisted of 5 members; with new members like Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, and Indonesia, they are now a group of 11 member nations. Adding new members has made BRICS more geographically representative of a broader region of nations.
The recent 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi was a diplomatic success in the narrow sense that its 11 members adopted a consensus declaration despite major internal disagreements. Substantively, however, it showed that BRICS is becoming a more visible platform for the Global South without yet becoming a cohesive geopolitical or economic alternative to Western-led institutions. At the 18th BRICS Summit, held under India’s Presidency, leaders adopted the New Delhi Declaration, which reaffirms mutual respect and understanding, sovereign equality, solidarity, democracy, openness, inclusiveness, collaboration, and consensus.
During BRICS, the leaders discussed payment connectivity issues, local-currency arrangements, and the possibility of an alternative transaction infrastructure. They also discussed the member nations' options in case of escalating geopolitical tensions or other unexpected financial restrictions. Despite their discussions, the dollar's strength and role are undeniable, rooted in payments technology: deep capital markets, liquidity, legal predictability, network effects, and widespread investor trust. BRICS cannot quickly replace these underpinnings. The BRICS conference was strategic for India, as it offered an opportunity to project itself as the voice of the Global South and engage in dialogue with China, Russia, and the Gulf States.
Another significant moment was the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to India after seven years. The BRICS summit gave Asia’s two largest powers, China and India, a chance to discuss unresolved boundary disputes, strategic distrust, trade imbalances, and broader competition for influence in Asia.
BRICS strengthened the group’s claim to represent developing-country concerns in global governance. It exposed the limits of consensus diplomacy: members could agree on general principles but not on strong, enforceable, or clearly targeted positions on major conflicts.
It did not create a credible alternative world order, a unified foreign-policy bloc, or a viable substitute for the dollar-based financial system. The key outcome of the 18th BRICS summit was a demand for reforms in the IMF, World Bank, and the UN System. It pushed practical, though early-stage, work on payments, local currencies, digital cooperation, and economic resilience. Overall, the New Delhi BRICS summit succeeded because it preserved BRICS unity despite internal disagreement and strengthened the group's collective claim to represent the aspirations of the Global South.
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