Expanded BRICS offers India wider Global South outreach, stronger diplomatic leverage: Report

Source: Lokmat Times | Original Published At: 2026-09-13 14:49:15 UTC

Key Points

• A Vietnam Times report says India's significance in BRICS Plus extends beyond the outcome of the New Delhi summit.
• The expanded grouping gives India a broader Global South constituency but presents a more complicated exercise in coalition management.
• The report says India should deepen ties with the UAE and other pragmatic middle powers while engaging newer members without allowing expansion to weaken BRICS.
• BRICS enlargement is described as giving the grouping broader geographic reach, greater demographic and economic weight, and a stronger claim to represent dissatisfaction with the existing international order.
• The report argues that BRICS Plus can amplify India's preferred themes of strategic autonomy, multipolarity, sovereign equality, reformed multilateralism, and greater representation for developing countries.
• It states that India does not need BRICS to replace the international order but to increase India's bargaining power within it.
• The report suggests India should view BRICS Plus as one pillar of a broader strategy rather than its primary foreign policy platform.