CONTEXT

• The 13th BRICS summit is set to be held this year, in September, in digital format under India’s chairmanship.

BRICS

• BRICS is an acronym for the grouping of the world’s leading emerging economies- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
• History: It was launched by a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2006 and riding on the political synergy created by regular summits since 2009, BRIC turned itself into BRICS in 2010, with the entry of South Africa.
• Objective: The grouping seeks to deepen, broaden and intensify cooperation within the grouping and among the individual countries for more sustainable, equitable and mutually beneficial development.
• Significance: The importance of BRICS is self-evident: it represents 42% of the world’s population, 30% of the land area, 24% of global GDP and 16% of international trade.
• Annual meetings: The BRICS Leaders’ Summit is convened annually and the Chairmanship of the forum is rotated annually among the members, in accordance with the acronym B-R-I-C-S.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE GROUPING

• The grouping has gone through a reasonably productive journey since its start in 2006:
  • It strove to serve as a bridge between the Global North and Global South.
  • It developed a common perspective on a wide range of global and regional issues;
  • It established the New Development Bank;
  • It created a financial stability net in the form of Contingency Reserve Arrangement;
  • It is on the verge of setting up a Vaccine Research and Development Virtual Center.

IMMEDIATE PRIORITIES

As the current chair, India has outlined four priorities of the grouping:

The first is to pursue reform of multilateral institutions

• These institutions range from the United Nations, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to the World Trade Organization and now even the World Health Organization.
• However, this is not a new goal for BRICS. It has had very little success so far.
• Reform needs global consensus which is hardly feasible in the current climate of strategic contestation between the U.S. and China and the devastation caused by COVID-19 to health, lives and livelihoods.

The second is the resolve to combat terrorism

• Terrorism is an international phenomenon affecting Europe, Africa, Asia and other parts of the world.
• Tragic developments concerning Afghanistan have further stressed on the need to bridge the gap between rhetoric and action.
• In this context, BRICS is attempting to pragmatically shape its counter-terrorism strategy by crafting the BRICS Counter Terrorism Action Plan containing specific measures to fight radicalisation, terrorist financing and misuse of the Internet by terrorist groups.
  • This plan is expected to be a key deliverable at the forthcoming summit and may hopefully bring some change.

Third is to Promote technological and digital solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals:

• In the times of pandemic, when mobility throughout the globe has been to its lowest, digital tools have helped a world adversely hit by the pandemic.
• India has been at the forefront of using new technological tools to improve governance amidst the health crisis.

Fourt is to Expand people-to-people cooperation

• Despite the opportunities and great potential, intra-BRICS trade and investment flows are very low.
• In order to remove these trade barriers, policymakers have been encouraging an increase in intra-BRICS cooperation in diverse areas like agriculture, disaster resilience, digital health, traditional medicine and customs cooperation.
• BRICS nations can also employ measures like: having a single BRICS visa for other nations, removing visa requirements for member nations to improve otherwise restricted people to people cooperation amidst the covid pandemic.

CONCLUSION

• The idea of BRICS – a common pursuit of shared interests by the five emerging economies from four continents – is fundamentally sound and relevant.

• The five-power combine has succeeded, though up to a point, but it now confronts multiple challenges:
  • China’s economic rise has created a serious imbalance within BRICS;
  • Beijing’s aggressive policy, especially against India, puts BRICS solidarity under exceptional strain;
  • BRICS countries have not done enough to assist the Global South to win their optimal support for their agenda.
• Hence, it is necessary for leaders, officials and academics of this grouping to undertake serious discussions and find a way out of the present predicament.

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/its-time-to-build-brics-better/article36209516.ece