Politics of Summitry: Brics comes to Delhi

Politics of Summitry: Brics comes to Delhi

Dr D K Giri Summitry is the highest form of diplomacy, and it's most political. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosts the 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam on September 12-13, Delhi witnesses the classic logic of summitry that you...

Summitry is the highest form of diplomacy, and it's most political. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosts the 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam on September 12-13, Delhi witnesses the classic logic of summitry that you and I have discussed for years.

This is the fourth time India chairs BRICS after 2012, 2016 and 2021, and this year marks 20 years since BRIC was coined as a concept. The official theme India has chosen is "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability" with a Humanity First, people-centric pitch. What is the significance of a summit? A summit is not just another meeting. It is a meeting of principals. Foreign ministers negotiate commas; Heads of Government decide destinies.

First, it creates a deadline politics. For 350-odd meetings held across 25 Indian cities during India's chairship, sherpas and sous-sherpas haggle over paragraphs, but they know nothing moves until leaders arrive. A summit forces a decision. Second, it is theatre for bilateralism. On the fringe of a multilateral summit, leaders meet bilaterally without the burden of a formal bilateral visit. Protocol is lighter, expectations lower, but optics higher.

A handshake in Delhi tells the world that talking is still possible. It generates a climate of confidence. You remember how in 2017, China and India pulled back from the Doklam face-off just before the BRICS summit in Xiamen and the SCO? The need to present a coherent communiqué made both bury the hatchet, at least temporarily. Summitry does not resolve conflict, but it freezes it for cooperation.

Third, it is about communique management. To produce a joint declaration - Rio last year had 126 paragraphs - leaders have to subsume bilateral tensions. For two days, adversaries become colleagues. That is the unwritten rule of summitry. That is why Delhi matters now.

How is India using the summit to normalise relations? India is masterfully using this BRICS chairship as a normalisation platform. Take China. If Xi Jinping lands in Delhi, it will be his first India visit in seven years since Mamallapuram in October 2019. After Galwan in 2020, ties froze.

What changed? India and China have held intense back-channel work - the 25th round of Special Representative talks between NSA Ajit Doval and Wang Yi in Beijing on August 28, direct flights resumed, visas restored, Kailash Mansarovar pilgrimage revived. Sources say Modi met Xi in Kazan in October 2024 and in Tianjin for SCO in August 2025 to stabilise the Line of Actual Control. Over 50,000 troops still remain deployed. De-escalation is incomplete. BRICS gives Modi and Xi a face-saving, multilateral umbrella to meet bilaterally and show that economic decoupling has limits.

With Russia, the dynamic is opposite - normalisation means reaffirmation. Putin is coming to Delhi for the second time in less than a year after the December 2025 annual summit. India has maintained defence and energy ties with Moscow despite Western pressure, and the Kremlin has already indicated that 90% of Russia-BRICS trade is now in national currencies and the issue of excess rupees is being resolved. With the wider Global South, India is using BRICS to repeat its G-20 trick.

Delhi is expecting about 25 countries at leaders or senior level. Full members now are 11: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, UAE, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia. Confirmed or expected are: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping with a delegation of 400 officials, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim, Thai PM Anutin Charnvirakul, Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed, plus Cuba, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Brazil may send Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira instead of Lula.

The formal agenda is five-fold: resilient supply chains, trade and investment, financial cooperation through New Development Bank and local currency lending, innovation including digital public infrastructure and AI, and reform of global governance - UN Security Council and IMF quota reforms.

The real agenda, however, is delivery. As one analysis noted, this summit is less about grand vision and more about whether BRICS can deliver practical cooperation - payment systems that actually connect, NDB scaling to 30% local currency loans, customs integration.

Thorny issues are many: expansion vs coherence. First, after Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, UAE joined in 2024 and Indonesia in 2025, BRICS is heavier but less coherent. Saudi Arabia's status remains ambiguous. Consensus is harder. Second, Iran-UAE divides over West Asia. As noted, this is the minefield. Third is the de-dollarisation narrative. India has framed BRICS as non-Western, not anti-Western. It does not want an anti-US communiqué that will spook its Western partners.

Fourth issue is China-India economic asymmetry. Bilateral trade with BRICS partners is $417 billion, a third of India's merchandise trade, with exports expected to double to $200 billion by 2030. But Chinese import dependence remains sensitive.

Will India rope in African countries like it did in G-20 with African Union induction? Yes, but differently. India is not pushing formal expansion this time - officials said India is not pursuing an expansion agenda. Instead, it is doing outreach. Nigeria is invited as outreach, Egypt and Ethiopia are already members providing Africa's voice, South Africa is championing AfCFTA and infrastructure financing. India's play is to use NDB to fund water, sanitation and PIDA infrastructure, and project its Digital Public Infrastructure model - exactly what it did in G-20 to take credit as voice of Global South.

For India, success will be defined by four metrics: One, a successful Modi-Xi bilateral that stabilises LAC and resumes economic normalcy without conceding strategic ground. If Xi comes and meets Modi, the summit is already a success. Two, a declaration that is balanced - India wants a Delhi Declaration that talks about reformed multilateralism, Global South voice, and development, but avoids anti-West rhetoric or condemnation of West Asia that alienates UAE and its own interests.

Three, concrete deliverables on NDB, trade and digital - if Finance Ministers' meeting in Mumbai on September 9-10 can agree on BRICS Clear payment initiative and local currency settlement, and on AI and agriculture cooperation, India can claim practical outcome, not just photo-op. Four, Africa plus Global South optics- bringing Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt and South Africa into a single frame as development partners will allow Modi to reprise his G-20 African Union success.

Challenges are obvious. Managing Putin and Xi in Delhi while Antonio Guterres is also present and while Trump-Xi-Putin summit talk casts a shadow will test India's balancing art. Managing Iran-UAE contradiction in the same room will test its drafting art. And managing expectations - 400 Chinese officials, 100 NSG commandos, traffic sealed Delhi - the logistics is itself geopolitics.

BRICS is, as one commentator said, the God of small things, but its problems with big issues are becoming harder. India's job as chair is to keep it small, practical, and Global South-centric. That itself would be summitry at its best - burying hatchets, if only for two days in Delhi, to build resilience. (INFA)