BRICS — Bloc, Expansion & New Development Bank

Origins and Evolution

BRICS is an intergovernmental organisation comprising major emerging market economies. The concept originated with economist Jim O'Neill (Goldman Sachs, 2001), who coined the acronym BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India, China — as a shorthand for the world's fastest-growing large economies.

The first formal BRIC foreign ministers' meeting was held in New York in 2006; the first standalone Leaders' Summit was in 2009. South Africa was invited to the 2011 Sanya Summit and formally joined, completing the BRICS five.

Membership

Original 5 (BRICS-5, 2006–2024)

Expansion — New Full Members (2024–2025)

At the Johannesburg Summit (August 2023), six countries were invited to join: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Four took their seats on 1 January 2024, Argentina declined, and Saudi Arabia's status remains disputed (below). Indonesia joined separately in January 2025.

Argentina was invited but declined in December 2023: President Javier Milei, who took office that month, told the BRICS leaders in a letter dated 22 December 2023 (made public on 29 December) that the timing for Argentina's membership was "not opportune". It never took up the 1 January 2024 seat.

Saudi Arabia: two positions, printed side by side.

• Counted as a member: India's BRICS 2026 chairship website (accessed 22 Sep 2026) says Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE became member countries in the 2024 expansion, and lists Saudi Arabia among the 11 members.
• Not formally joined: Al Jazeera (15 May 2026), reporting on the New Delhi Foreign Ministers' meeting, states that "Riyadh has yet to formally join the bloc".

The gap is between the chairship's listing and a formal act of accession by Riyadh, which has not been reported. No record shows Saudi Arabia "joining" at the Rio Summit in July 2025.

Current membership: 11 full members on the chairship website's count (as of 22 Sep 2026), which includes Saudi Arabia; 10 if Saudi Arabia is left out pending formal accession.

BRICS at a Glance — Key Statistics

BRICS now accounts for a larger share of global GDP (PPP) than the G7 (~43%). This shift underlies the bloc's claim to represent a "non-Western" multipolar economic order.

Kazan Summit 2024

16th BRICS Summit — Kazan, Russia, 22–24 October 2024 (Russia's BRICS Presidency)

Theme: "Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security"

Key Outcomes

Modi-Xi bilateral on the margins. PM Modi and President Xi Jinping held a bilateral summit at Kazan in October 2024, their first formal bilateral meeting since the Galwan clash of June 2020. It directly preceded India and China announcing the LAC patrolling agreement on 21 October 2024. Both leaders agreed to restore normal diplomatic and people-to-people relations and to intensify work on boundary management.

13 Countries Invited as BRICS Partners (Kazan 2024) → 10 Partners (2025)

At Kazan 2024, 13 countries were invited to the new BRICS Partner category: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.

Partner status is a step below full membership. It was taken up in three stages:

• 1 January 2025: Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan
• 17 January 2025: Nigeria (VOA, 22 Jan 2025)
• June 2025: Vietnam, announced by Brazil's foreign ministry as the 10th partner (AIR News, 14 Jun 2025)

That gives 10 partner countries (the same list appears on India's BRICS 2026 website, accessed 22 Sep 2026). Indonesia became a full member instead of a partner; Algeria and Turkey have not taken up partner status.

Brazil BRICS Presidency 2025

Host: Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; 17th BRICS Summit: 6–7 July 2025

Theme: "Strengthening Global South Cooperation for More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance"

Brazil's four priorities:

1. Reform of global governance (UN, Bretton Woods institutions)
2. Sustainable development and climate finance
3. Artificial intelligence governance and digital cooperation
4. South-South trade and investment facilitation

17th BRICS Summit — Rio de Janeiro Declaration Outcomes

The Rio de Janeiro Declaration (126 paragraphs) was adopted by the leaders on 6 July 2025. Among its paragraphs:

• It condemns "in the strongest terms" the 22 April 2025 terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir (Pahalgam), in which 26 people were killed.
• It condemns "the military strikes against the Islamic Republic of Iran since 13 June 2025".
• It voices concern over "unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures".
• Para 45 strongly supports further expansion of NDB membership and backs President Dilma Rousseff's leadership of the bank.
• Para 126 extends full support to India's 2026 chairship and the XVIII Summit in India.

Notable leadership absences: Xi Jinping did not attend in person, the first time since he took power in 2012 (Premier Li Qiang led China's delegation); Beijing's stated reason to the Brazilian government was a scheduling conflict (SCMP, 25 Jun 2025). Putin did not attend in person because of the ICC arrest warrant, Brazil being a party to the Rome Statute (Al Jazeera, 6 Jul 2025).

US reaction: During the summit, US President Donald Trump posted that any country "aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS" would be charged an additional 10% tariff (BBC, 7 Jul 2025). In 2024 he had threatened 100% tariffs if BRICS moved to a rival currency.

Three additional declarations adopted:

1. BRICS Leaders' Framework Declaration on Climate Finance — first collective BRICS commitment under the UNFCCC/Paris Agreement; timed before COP30 (Brazil, November 2025)
2. BRICS Leaders' Statement on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence (Rio, 6 July 2025)
3. BRICS Partnership for the Elimination of Socially Determined Diseases

New financial mechanism (pilot stage): BRICS Multilateral Guarantees (BMG) initiative. Rio did not create an operational facility: members "commenced the discussions to establish" the BMG and agreed guidelines to incubate it within the NDB as a pilot, starting with NDB members and without additional capital contributions (para 48). The New Delhi Declaration (Sep 2026, para 102) welcomes progress and encourages "the development of pilot transactions".

200 new cooperation mechanisms were created or reinforced, across more than 200 meetings, during Brazil's presidency year (Brazilian BRICS presidency, brics.br, 6 Jul 2025).

India's BRICS Chairship 2026

India holds the BRICS chairship for calendar year 2026, taking over from Brazil. This is India's fourth BRICS chairship (previous: 2012, 2016, 2021).

Theme: "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability" (the initials spell BRICS), with a lotus-and-Namaste logo.

Four pillars of India's chairship (official wording, BRICS 2026 website):

1. Resilience — strengthening economic, social and institutional resilience to navigate global uncertainties, supply-chain disruptions, health challenges and climate risks
2. Innovation — digital public infrastructure (DPI), emerging technologies, fintech, AI and knowledge sharing
3. Cooperation — policy coordination, development finance, trade facilitation, reform of global institutional governance and people-centric partnerships
4. Sustainability — climate action, green finance and energy transitions

Scale: South Africa's government news agency (SA News/GCIS, as republished by Eurasia Review, 14 Sep 2026) counted over 400 meetings and engagements in 30 cities during the chairship. Ministerial meetings named in the New Delhi Declaration include Agriculture (Indore), Transport (Nagpur), Education (Bhubaneswar), Culture (Bhopal, which adopted the Bhopal Declaration) and Women (Kochi), along with the first BRICS SME Forum (Agra).

Foreign Ministers' Meeting — New Delhi, 14–15 May 2026

US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026 began a war in which Iran repeatedly struck the UAE, itself a BRICS member (Al Jazeera, 15 May 2026). When BRICS foreign ministers met in New Delhi on 14–15 May 2026 they could not agree a joint statement. Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said one member had blocked parts of the text; the UAE's Minister of State Khalifa bin Shaheen Al Marar rejected his remarks. India, as chair, issued a chair's summary recording that "there were differing views among some members" on the conflict in the Middle East.

18th BRICS Summit — New Delhi (12–13 September 2026)

Leaders met at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, on 12–13 September 2026 for the XVIII Summit and on 12 September adopted the 140-paragraph "BRICS New Delhi Declaration: Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability". An Outreach/BRICS Plus Dialogue segment was also held. Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian attended in person (AP, 12 Sep 2026); for Xi it was the first visit to India in nearly seven years, and he and Modi held bilateral talks backing a "fair, reasonable" boundary settlement (Tribune, 12 Sep 2026). Modi had met Putin and Pezeshkian separately on 11 September.

What the declaration says:

• UN reform (para 13): China and Russia, as permanent members of the UN Security Council, reiterate support for the aspirations of Brazil and India to play a greater role in the UN, including its Security Council.
• Terrorism (para 40): condemns the 22 April 2025 attack in Jammu and Kashmir again.
• Trade and sanctions: criticises the "indiscriminate rising of tariffs and non-tariff measures" (para 21), condemns unilateral coercive measures including secondary sanctions (para 22) and opposes carbon border adjustment mechanisms (para 108). None of these paragraphs names a country.
• West Asia: para 28 calls for "maximum restraint" without naming the US, Israel, Iran or the Gulf states. Para 29 expresses serious concern over "deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities under full safeguards of the IAEA, in violation of international law", which AP read as indirect criticism of the US and Israeli strikes on Iran. Israel is named in the paragraphs on Gaza and Lebanon (paras 33 and 35). Unlike Rio 2025, the declaration does not explicitly condemn strikes on Iran.
• Payments (para 90): the BRICS Payment Task Force continues; no common currency.
• Finance track: welcomes the BRICS-NDB Knowledge Portal launched under the Indian chairship (para 115), India's BRICS Task Force on Growth and Development (para 100), progress on amending the CRA Treaty and the ninth CRA test run (para 97), and continued technical work and pilot transactions under the BMG (para 102).
• Next chair (para 140): support for China's 2027 chairship and the XIX Summit in China.

India's framing: Modi said "BRICS is not against anyone", called the moment a "coming of age" for the bloc in which the Global South must become a "rule-shaper", and proposed a BRICS seafarers' network in view of war-related maritime disruption (AP, 12 Sep 2026).

New Development Bank (NDB)

The New Development Bank is BRICS's multilateral development institution, established to fund infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies.

NDB — Core Facts

Dilma Rousseff succeeded K.V. Kamath (India), the bank's first President, in March 2023. The Russia-Ukraine war complicated NDB operations: the bank paused new projects in Russia and Belarus to protect its credit rating and its access to global capital markets. India navigated this carefully, supporting the NDB's continued operation while maintaining strategic autonomy on Russia sanctions. Under India's chairship the BRICS-NDB Knowledge Portal was launched with the bank.

NDB vs World Bank — Key Distinctions

Significance: The NDB's equal voting structure is its key distinction from the IMF and World Bank, where voting power is weighted by economic contribution and dominated by the US and Europe.

Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA)

The BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) is a framework for providing liquidity support to BRICS members facing balance of payments pressures — functioning as a mini-IMF.

The CRA is distinct from the NDB — NDB lends for projects; CRA provides emergency balance of payments support.

India and BRICS — Opportunities and Constraints

India's Strategic Interests

India's Core Constraints

1. China factor: Sino-Indian border tensions (Galwan 2020, ongoing LAC disputes) create a fundamental trust deficit within the bloc
2. Pakistan in SCO: Unlike SCO, BRICS does not include Pakistan — but India-China rivalry shapes every BRICS negotiation
3. De-dollarisation pressure: Russia and China have pushed hard for a BRICS currency or payment system to reduce dollar dependence; India has consistently resisted, arguing it would be premature, economically risky, and would target the US unnecessarily. US tariff threats against BRICS-aligned countries (10%, July 2025) raise the cost further
4. NDB governance drift: NDB membership has widened to 10 members (as of 22 Sep 2026), with six more admitted as prospective members, which risks diluting its BRICS-specific mandate
5. Russia-Ukraine war: India's non-condemnation of Russia contrasts with Western pressure; complicated India's G20 and BRICS positioning simultaneously
6. Divisions within the expanded bloc: The 2026 war on Iran set two members, Iran and the UAE, against each other and blocked a joint statement at the May 2026 Foreign Ministers' meeting

India's Stance on De-dollarisation

Replacing the dollar is not India's policy. Speaking at Chatham House in London, EAM S. Jaishankar said India has "no interest in undermining the dollar", called the dollar "the source of international economic stability", and added that "I don't think there's a unified BRICS position on this" (The Tribune, 6 Mar 2025). India's position: promote local currency trade on a bilateral basis (e.g., India-Russia rupee-rouble trade for oil) but not push for a replacement to the dollar-dominated global system, which India sees as both premature and potentially destabilising. The New Delhi Declaration under India's chairship (12 Sep 2026, para 90) reflects this: it acknowledges the BRICS Payment Task Force's work on cross-border payment interoperability and on trade settlement in local currencies, "while respecting national priorities and acknowledging that there is no one-size-fits-all approach", and contains no BRICS currency.

BRICS vs G7 vs G20 — Comparison

Key BRICS Summits

BRICS and the NDB — Geopolitical Significance

BRICS represents a non-Western multilateral architecture — not anti-Western but offering alternatives to Bretton Woods institutions. Its significance lies in:

1. Alternative financing: NDB offers project loans without structural adjustment conditionalities
2. Alternative narrative: A "counter-hegemonic" narrative challenging US dollar dominance and G7 agenda-setting
3. India's paradox: India benefits from the non-Western platform but is uncomfortable with BRICS being weaponised against the dollar-dominated system, given India's own interests in financial stability and US relations. At the New Delhi Summit (Sep 2026), Modi put it as "BRICS is not against anyone"
4. BRICS+ expansion: The partner category created at Kazan (10 partners by June 2025) is a soft expansion that makes BRICS more of a "Global South" club than a tight economic grouping
5. China's dominance: The bloc risks becoming an instrument of Chinese influence rather than genuine multipolarity

Cross-paper relevance

• GS2 (primary) — BRICS expansion and the partner category; India's 2026 chairship and New Delhi Declaration; New Development Bank (NDB); BRICS de-dollarisation debate; India-China coexistence in BRICS
• GS3 — NDB as alternative development finance; BRICS economic complementarity; China's role in BRICS economic cooperation
• GS4 (Ethics) — Multi-alignment ethics: belonging to BRICS (Russia-China dominated) and Quad simultaneously; development finance and conditionality
• Essay — "BRICS at 20: from potential to reality?"; "De-dollarisation: threat to US hegemony or global financial stability risk?"

What Changed in 2024–26

Expansion Changed What BRICS Can Agree On

Kazan in October 2024 was the first summit of the enlarged bloc, and it settled the shape of the expansion: a full-membership tier that took in Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE, and a partner tier invented on the spot for countries the bloc wanted close but not inside. Two years on, the effect is visible in the drafting. The Rio Declaration of July 2025 could name the strikes on Iran; the New Delhi Declaration of September 2026 could not, because Iran and the UAE now sit at the same table and had spent the spring on opposite sides of a war. The failure of the New Delhi Foreign Ministers' meeting in May 2026 to agree any joint text at all, and India's resort to a chair's summary, is the clearest evidence that enlargement has imported its members' quarrels into a consensus body.

UPSC angle: Mains — the trade-off between weight and cohesion in an expanded grouping. The same bloc that can claim a larger share of global output than the G7 has lost the ability to name a belligerent, and the partner category is the institutional device that lets it keep growing without paying that price again.

India's Chairship Bought Consensus With Generalised Language

Four months after its foreign ministers failed to produce a text, India brought every member to a consensus declaration at Bharat Mandapam in September 2026. The price was generalised language on the Iran war and on US tariffs, with no country named in the paragraphs on trade measures or on West Asia. The gain was concrete: UN Security Council reform language from China and Russia, a second leaders'-level condemnation of the Pahalgam attack, and a finance track weighted towards Indian deliverables, from the Knowledge Portal to the Task Force on Growth and Development. Read against India's G20 presidency of 2023, the chairship shows the same method applied to a harder room.

UPSC angle: Mains — assess India's chairship record. The answer-worthy tension is between consensus and clarity: a declaration that every member can sign is also a declaration that condemns no one, and whether that is diplomacy or drift is the argument the question wants.

BRICS Became a Venue for India-China Diplomacy

The pattern set at Kazan in October 2024, when the Modi-Xi bilateral on the margins immediately preceded the LAC patrolling agreement, repeated at New Delhi in September 2026, when Xi made his first visit to India in nearly seven years and the two leaders backed a "fair, reasonable" boundary settlement. The bloc's multilateral output is not what has served India best here. Its value has been as a standing calendar of leader-level meetings with a neighbour India has no other regular summit with, which is a point worth making in any answer that treats BRICS as a purely economic grouping.

De-dollarisation Stayed Rhetoric, and the Cost of It Rose

India's position has not moved: local-currency settlement on a bilateral basis, no common currency, no support for anything framed as displacing the dollar. What changed is the price of ambiguity. President Trump's tariff threat during the Rio Summit in July 2025 made the risk of being read as anti-dollar concrete rather than theoretical, and under India's chairship the payments agenda stayed deliberately at the level of plumbing: interoperability, task-force work, explicit language against a one-size-fits-all approach. The New Delhi Declaration contains no common currency and no timetable for one.

UPSC angle: India's caution on de-dollarisation is an application of strategic autonomy, not an exception to it. The bloc wants leverage over the dollar system; India wants access to it, and the declaration language is where that difference is resolved each year.

The NDB Kept Widening While Its BRICS Identity Thinned

The bank admitted Algeria in 2025 and Uzbekistan, its first Central Asian member, in 2026, and half a dozen more countries have been admitted by the Board of Governors without yet depositing their instruments of accession. Rio in July 2025 backed further expansion outright. The direction of travel is towards a general emerging-market development bank rather than a BRICS instrument, which is an asset for reach and a problem for the equal-voting principle that distinguishes it from the World Bank. The Russia-Ukraine war already showed the constraint: a bank that needs global capital markets cannot lend freely to a sanctioned founder. What to watch is whether the BRICS Multilateral Guarantees pilot, incubated within the bank and still at the stage of pilot transactions in September 2026, becomes an operating facility.

UPSC angle: Prelims tests the NDB's fixed facts. Mains tests the tension between widening membership and the equal-voting claim, and the Russia-Ukraine episode is the concrete illustration that the bank's independence from the dollar system has limits.

PYQ Relevance

• (Prelims 2021): "With reference to the New Development Bank, which of the following statements is correct?" — HQ Shanghai; equal voting rights; $100B authorised capital
• (Prelims 2024 pattern): BRICS membership after expansion; Kazan Summit outcomes; NDB president
• (GS2 Mains 2022): "Discuss the relevance of BRICS in the current global order. Has the bloc lived up to its initial promise?"
• (GS2 Mains 2023): "Examine India's role in BRICS and assess the opportunities and challenges for India in the expanded BRICS."

Exam Strategy

Non-negotiable Prelims facts:

• BRIC coined by Jim O'Neill (Goldman Sachs) in 2001
• First BRIC Summit: 16 June 2009, Yekaterinburg
• South Africa joined: 2011 (Sanya Summit) → became BRICS
• NDB HQ: Shanghai; authorised capital: $100 billion; president: Dilma Rousseff (first elected March 2023; re-elected 19 March 2025 for a 2nd term to July 2030)
• NDB founding: 2014 agreement; operational July 2015; cumulative approvals USD 42.9 billion, 139 projects (NDB, accessed 22 Sep 2026)
• NDB members: 10 (5 original BRICS + Bangladesh, UAE, Egypt, Algeria, Uzbekistan); Algeria joined 19 May 2025; Uzbekistan = 10th member (5 June 2026); Uruguay, Colombia and four others are prospective only
• CRA: $100 billion; China = $41B; Brazil/Russia/India = $18B each; South Africa = $5B
• New members (1 Jan 2024): Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, UAE; Indonesia (6 Jan 2025) → 11 full members on India's chairship-site count, which includes Saudi Arabia (press reports say Riyadh has not formally joined)
• Argentina declined (December 2023, letter dated 22 Dec)
• Kazan 2024 (16th Summit): partner category created, 13 countries invited; 10 partners by June 2025 (Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan from 1 Jan 2025; Nigeria 17 Jan 2025; Vietnam June 2025); Indonesia became full member, not partner
• 17th BRICS Summit: Rio de Janeiro, July 6–7, 2025; Xi Jinping absent (Li Qiang attended); Putin absent in person (ICC warrant); Rio de Janeiro Declaration (126 paras) adopted; BMG = NDB-incubated pilot
• India chairs BRICS 2026 (4th time); theme: "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability"; 18th BRICS Summit held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, 12–13 September 2026; New Delhi Declaration (140 paras); China chairs in 2027

Mains analytical angles:

• BRICS as India's multi-alignment platform: how India uses BRICS alongside QUAD and G20 simultaneously
• India's de-dollarisation stance: why India resists — strategic interests in dollar stability, US ties, premature alternative infrastructure; US tariff threats (July 2025) and the "no one-size-fits-all" payments language of the New Delhi Declaration
• China's dominance within BRICS: is it genuine multilateralism or Chinese influence?
• NDB vs World Bank: equal voting as the key distinction; no conditionality as the selling point for Global South
• BRICS expansion dilemma: larger membership brings geopolitical weight but dilutes coherence; the Iran-UAE split that blocked a joint statement in May 2026 is the test case
• India's 2026 chairship: from a failed foreign ministers' text (May) to a consensus summit declaration (September)
• India-China within BRICS: managing rivalry within a cooperative framework — lessons from SCO parallels

Cross-link: For current BRICS developments after the New Delhi Summit and in the run-up to China's 2027 chairship, follow Ujiyari.com.

Key Terms

New Development Bank

• Definition: The New Development Bank (NDB) is a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) to mobilise resources for infrastructure and sustainable-development projects in emerging economies and developing countries; it is headquartered in Shanghai, China.
• Context: The Agreement establishing the NDB was signed on 15 July 2014 at the 6th BRICS Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, and the bank's founding members formally joined on 3 July 2015. It was created as an alternative to Western-dominated institutions like the World Bank and IMF, offering developing nations a source of finance with more equitable governance. The NDB began with an initial authorised capital of US$100 billion, with the founding BRICS nations subscribing equally and each holding an equal vote and no veto. Since 2021 it has expanded beyond the original five, admitting Bangladesh, the UAE, Egypt, Algeria and Uzbekistan (10 members as of 22 Sep 2026).
• UPSC Relevance: For Prelims, the NDB is a high-frequency factual topic: aspirants must know its headquarters (Shanghai), founding (Fortaleza Agreement 2014, operational 2015), the equal capital-subscription model among BRICS founders, and that it is distinct from the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). For Mains GS2 (international institutions and groupings) and GS3 (economic development, infrastructure financing), it features in discussions of reform of the global financial architecture, de-dollarisation/local-currency lending, and India's role in alternative multilateral bodies. It is a foundational concept underpinning questions on BRICS, AIIB, and the broader theme of South-South cooperation; aspirants should not confuse the NDB with the Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Sources & Verification

BRICS membership and partners

• BRICS India 2026, official chairship website: members, partners, theme, pillars, past summits (accessed 22 Sep 2026)
• SCMP — Indonesia joins BRICS as newest full member, Brazil's foreign ministry says (7 Jan 2025)
• VOA — Nigeria's new BRICS partner status (22 Jan 2025)
• AIR News — Vietnam officially joins BRICS as partner country (14 Jun 2025)
• Al Jazeera — Argentina announces that it will not join BRICS bloc (29 Dec 2023)

Rio Summit 2025

• Rio de Janeiro Declaration, 6 Jul 2025 (official text, BRICS Information Centre, University of Toronto); MEA copy
• BRICS Leaders' Statement on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence (6 Jul 2025)
• Al Jazeera — Brazil hosts BRICS summit; Putin, Xi skip Rio trip (6 Jul 2025)
• BBC — Trump threatens extra 10% tariff on BRICS-aligned countries (7 Jul 2025)
• Brazilian BRICS presidency (brics.br) — BRICS Summit signs historic commitment in Rio for more inclusive and sustainable governance (6 Jul 2025) — brics.br is not reachable from India; text verified via the Internet Archive snapshot of 16 Jun 2026
• SCMP — In a first, Xi will miss BRICS summit in Rio as Li Qiang leads China delegation (25 Jun 2025)

India's 2026 chairship and the New Delhi Summit

• PM India — BRICS New Delhi Declaration: Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability (12 Sep 2026)
• Al Jazeera — BRICS talks end without joint statement as divisions over Iran war deepen (15 May 2026)
• AP via PBS NewsHour — BRICS leaders voice concern over Middle East, condemn unilateral sanctions at India summit (12 Sep 2026)
• Tribune — BRICS 2026: PM Modi, Xi hold bilateral talks; back "fair, reasonable" settlement of boundary dispute (live blog, 12 Sep 2026)
• Eurasia Review (SA News) — BRICS Summit concludes with adoption of New Delhi Declaration (14 Sep 2026)

De-dollarisation and India's position

• The Tribune — India has no interest in undermining dollar, says Jaishankar (Chatham House, London; 6 Mar 2025)

New Development Bank

• NDB — Members and prospective members (accessed 22 Sep 2026)
• NDB — Uzbekistan officially joins NDB as new member country (18 Jun 2026)
• NDB — Board of Governors re-elects Dilma Rousseff as NDB President (25 Mar 2025)
• NDB homepage — "At a Glance" approvals and recent projects (accessed 22 Sep 2026)