While India is a member of many pluri-lateral groups on both sides of the geo-strategic “divide”, its engagement in Quad and with BRICS present the country with interesting, and sometimes contrasting, dilemmas.
While Quad has always had a geopolitical security objective vis-à-vis China, India’s vision goes beyond this narrow thrust to a much broader redrawing of the security and techno-economic architecture of the Indo-Pacific region.
With Quad now working on reorientation of global supply chains of critical technologies and on a range of areas of direct strategic relevance to the region, including digital, telecom, health, power, and semiconductors, it has underlined that development too has a security perspective which cannot be ignored.
India, in its turn, has benefited through enhanced bilateral relations with Quad partners, especially the U.S.
India’s independent policy of close relations with Russia and calling for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine war, both of which are frowned upon by the West, do not distract India from strengthening the Quad.
Some Quad members and European countries are themselves enhancing their bilateral engagement with China, underlining their differing bilateral and regional compulsions.
Against the backdrop of India’s enthusiastic engagement with Quad, its engagement with BRICS presents a different conundrum.
India’s participation in BRICS has fluctuated from enthusiastic to lukewarm.
While BRICS’ initiatives such as New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement have been pioneering, the attempt by China to use BRICS to grandstand and push its world view on the Global South and now, to push back the West has made India wary of giving BRICS a higher profile.
India had, consequently, been reluctant to expand BRICS.
In fact, in 2018, Mr. Putin too underlined his reluctance to expand BRICS
But after Quad and the situation in Ukraine, Russia too realised the potential of BRICS, which includes pushing back the West, and lined up behind China.
The change of guard in Brazil leaves India as the lone member to push back China.
A reluctant India decided to accept BRICS’s expansion than oppose it and now many more countries are reportedly waiting to join.
Even if India has the best of bilateral relations with all the new members, we need to make sure it all adds up to support for India inside BRICS.
For this, India cannot afford to be ambivalent about BRICS any more.
To counter moves to take BRICS in a direction India does not like, we need to be more engaged, not less.
With India being the only country common to both Quad and BRICS, the country cannot afford to downplay one for the other.
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