Goldman Sachs in its publication in the year of 2001 first time ever coined the acronym BRIC to mention a new economic growth centre for the near future. By the time the developed economies realised the power of these nations, their economic structures expanded manifold. The first successful summit of Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2009 earmarked a threat to the G-7 countries. With almost the similar structure of the economies having high GDP growth rates, they went on to represent the interests of developing nations in the United Nations, World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund. In the past month, the 7th Summit of BRICS was hosted by Ufa city in Russia with the agenda being “BRICS Partnership – A Powerful Factor of Global Development”.
The highlight of the summit was the signing of the Memorandum of Association of New Development Bank which is headquartered at Shanghai, China with the first Chairman of this institution being K.V. Kamath from India. Though on the record it does not says to establish a new epicentre of global economy, it clearly is an alternative for the West-led World Bank and IMF. Every other member organisation is in process to shift economic and political power of the world from the west and in the hands of the developing economies, which would not take more than a couple of years as reported by the economists. The Bank is being portrayed as a criticique of the other financial institutions in which there is an existence of veto powers and the power of vote according to their share in the capital. This defines the introduction of a new and powerful approach towards the concept of international diplomacy. With the intention is inclined towards contributing to the fast and steady growth of the developing nations, this would certainly increase the global presence of these five nations in aiding the needy and threby also fulfilling its own motives of a strong and developed economy. As far as India is concerned, this is great step towards its own development projects and would have a great impact on its ‘Look East’ policy.
The financial crisis in Greece and the lifting of the sanctions on Iran with climate change, cyber security and expansion of trade with each other too formed part of the discussions in the summit. With the annual meetings and a financial institution coming up, it is analyzed that the BRICS is slowly moving towards the formation of an organisation as against the present multilateral dialogue framework. If it takes on to form an organisation, they would be ahead of the Group of 7 countries and would be competing against the powerful EU framework. Though this not being the intention of the BRICS at this point, the nations are up for developing themselves, as the growth in the power of developing nations due to their aid would have a positive effect on their common goals.
India demanded a low ambition 10 steps project such as agricultural and railway research center from the present BRICS summit which would go ahead with making a cooperative and involving environment in the 5 nation dialogue. But there lies one issue on which India did not return with exactly what it wanted from the discussions. Previously, China had defended Pakistan over the Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi who was the mastermind behind the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. The same concern has been raised by India at many different levels. India expected that this issue would be dealt specifically in the Declaration of the Ufa Summit. Due to China’s relation with Pakistan, it denied backing the same specifically and the impugned existence of the clause 36 of the Declaration remained a general criticism of the terrorist activities.
Coming on to the concluding part, what extra did India get out of this high-profile and powerful multilateral dialogue? That would be humbly answered in negative. The gains from the New Development Bank were expected in this atmosphere and all the nations had a similar catch. But non-inclusion of the United Nations 1296 Committee regarding terrorism heavily affects the objective of initiating a strong step against terrorism
