Two steps forward: Modi emerges taller after BRICS Delhi Meet

India will now have better bargaining power to deal with Trump 

By Nitya Chakraborty

The 18th BRICS summit held in New Delhi on September 12 and 13 has helped India regain its stature in the Global South, which it had lost soon after the coming of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister in 2014. Exactly twelve years later, the same Narendra Modi hosted the expanded BRICS meet and showed his diplomatic skill in ensuring a joint declaration on the basis of consensus, organised rapprochement between Iran and its adversaries in West Asia, sent a message to Donald Trump without naming the USA on strong Global South objection to his unilateral tariff moves and trade war, and held bilateral meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, emphasising increasing economic cooperation while emphasising Indian red lines.

India is the second biggest economic power in BRICS after China. The bonhomie between China, India and Russia at the summit must have worried Trump. Similarly, the U.S. President must have taken note of India’s role in mediation between Iran and UAE. BRICS meet gave signals that the U.S. does not have absolute powers to unilaterally decide the course of global geopolitics. BRICS believes in multilateralism, and India, Russia and China, the three big national economies of the BRICS bloc, share that view.

Does Modi’s performance during BRICS meet mean that he is distancing himself from Trump? The answer is big NO. Narendra Modi is a hardcore RSS product. He is the mascot of the right-wing BJP. Trump considers himself as the de facto leader of the Global Right. They have many things in common. But, at the same time, Narendra Modi is also a proud nationalist heading the country with the biggest population and the largest domestic market in the world. The enhanced stature of Narendra Modi after the BRICS meet will help him while negotiating with Donald Trump from a position of strength in the coming days.

Trump is hosting the G20 meet in Miami in December this year. There is a possibility that a summit of QUAD may also be held around that time, meaning India will not be the host as was decided earlier. After six weeks, U.S. mid-term elections will be held on November 3. If, as the indications suggest, the Republicans lose both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Trump will be under severe pressure. There is no threat to his presidency till his term ends in 2028, but Trump will be compelled to focus more on domestic issues, taking into account 2028 presidential elections.

So, India will be in a better position to negotiate with the USA on the final terms of the India-US trade deal, which is at the last stage of finalisation. Also, as regards the QUAD meet, already, Trump has lowered American priority on the Indo-Pacific region, following his last summit in Beijing. Hence, the QUAD meet may turn out to be just a routine affair, with no special importance. India will be comfortable in asserting its strategic autonomy vis-a-vis USA, while remaining an ally, but on a better footing compared to 2025 and the early years of 2026.

Apart from the warming India-China relations, it will be interesting to focus on the contents of the Xi-Modi bilateral meet, and the significance of what Xi said. The Indian PM emphasised on the thorny border issue in his meeting with Xi. But Xi came with other plans. The Chinese leader is focusing more on the possibility of making India a partner in the global supply chain dominated by China. Chinese officials have been talking about a win-win situation for India and China if the two largest economies of BRICS cooperate in this well-intentioned endeavour. This will mean more Chinese investments in India, and at the same time, more Indian global exports.

Indian officials have to scrutinise the Chinese proposal and examine what benefits can be derived by India, and whether there is any security threat from China. Similarly, Xi’s action plan for open-source AI platform is a challenge to USA. The Indian side has to go into all the ramifications of Xi’s ambitious proposal, since Indians are also key players in AI globally. From what Xi said, it was apparent that for the next five years, China’s priority in India is economic collaboration. It is more trade and investments. The political issues, including borders and differences over Arunachal, will remain at the current status quo, or what many Chinese scholars call a ‘strategic stalemate’. China will ensure that the relative peace is not disturbed, so that political hurdles to economic cooperation don’t raise their heads.

Overall, the message for India from the BRICS New Delhi summit is that Narendra Modi will have to be more assertive in exercising strategic autonomy within Indian foreign policy with regard to both USA and China. As regards Russia, despite the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991 and the emergence of the Russian Federation, there are deep emotional and structural links intimately connecting the two countries. Despite Narendra Modi’s deplorable neglect of India-Russia relations in his initial years of tenure, the third term has witnessed the Gulf crisis and compelled India to import oil from Russia in larger quantities. Russia has helped India in dealing with its balance of payment crisis over the last two years. The Indian government should now expand the areas of collaboration with Russia, apart from the usual defence deals and increased petroleum import.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now a big opportunity to reshape the Indian foreign policy and put it on a more independent footing, while maintaining constructive ties with all the three great powers – USA, China and Russia – on the basis of strategic autonomy. How the PM makes use of the gains India made in the BRICS New Delhi summit will, of course, be keenly watched by observers all around the world, especially as China takes over the BRICS presidency from India and hosts the summit in 2027. (IPA Service)