BRICS, the new world order?

The recently ended BRICS council meet in New Delhi gathered much media attention, but basically what is BRICS? And what are the opportunities it presents to India? My thoughts on that.

                                 Basically BRICS is an acronym which denotes the economic bloc of five countries Brazil, Russia, India, China and the newly joined South Africa. The common point of all these countries is that they are on a new verge of economic development. Although we can win debates by placing Russia and China in the already developed category, their presence adds muscle to the bloc. Now let us do a SWOT analysis on BRICS and its benefits for India.

Strengths: If you remember India's foreign policy, the first point that must come to mind is non-alignment. But over the past few years we have indeed aligned ourselves with many Blocs . So to counter that we align us with every possible Bloc so as to gain the support and friendship of every possible country. Thus BRICS allows us to strengthen bonds with a forum that has over quarter of the world's land area and more than 40% of the world population. Russia our eternal ally has been left in the lurch for some time because of India's inclination towards the US, so this is an ideal forum through which we can strengthen trade ties with them. Moreover bringing our "bully" neighbor China to the talk table as an equal with more support on our side is a big plus. Creating an alternate trade forum which is free from the EU influence is fundamental.


Weaknesses: The BRICS is still in a nascent stage, to facilitate trade relations, any economic forum must have a common currency like the euro, we DO NOT have that. The BRICS nations do not have common ideologies. Russia and China voted in one side and the others voted against in the recent UN resolutions against Syria and Sri Lanka. Another talking point is that the US dollar is still used in the trade transaction. The South Africa with a population of 40 million is not in the same league as the rest. It brings less to the table.


Opportunities:  Foremost one is to develop trade relations with China and hence counter balance the Sino-pak threat. With Russia and China being the largest world economies , India now has a chance to interact with the biggies as equals. A possible UNSC seat is also on the cards. Setting up stock exchange is local currencies is a big boost. Increase in trade to 500 m$ as promised will also be a major bonus. An opportunity to counter the Israel-US influence. Rise of BRICS will ensure the rise in stature of Asia as a superpower after the devastation in japan.


Threats: Will increase Chinese influence in Indian markets. US might get alarmed at the possible inclination of India towards Russia and other countries. America is still every BRICS member's highest trade partner. Succumbing to BRICS politics might lead to India losing its individual say in regional and world issues.

                     Thus, BRICS we see has a lot of promise but to make it a reality a lot of hard work is necessary. Goldman-sauchs predicted that the BRICS will overpower the G7 economically by 2050, now that's a goal worth working for.