BRICS SUMMIT - INTERNATIONAL
News: BRICS summit will be 'in-person' despite Putin warrant: Ramaphosa
What's in the news?
● South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that next month's BRICS summit, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to, will be held in-person despite an arrest warrant on the Russian leader.
Key takeaways:
● As a member of the ICC, South Africa would be expected to arrest Putin if he sets foot in the country.
BRICS:
● BRICS is an acronym for the grouping of the world’s leading emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
● The BRICS Leaders Summit is convened annually.
Backdrop:
● The first BRIC Summit took place in 2009 in the Russian Federation and focused on issues such as reform of global finance.
● South Africa was invited to join BRIC in December 2010, after which the group adopted the acronym BRICS. South Africa subsequently attended the Third BRICS Summit in Sanya, China, in March 2011.
● This successful interaction led to the decision that the dialogue was to be carried out at the level of Heads of State and Government in the annual summit.
Structure:
● BRICS does not exist in the form of organization, but it is an annual summit between the supreme leaders of five nations.
● The Chairmanship of the forum is rotated annually among the members, in accordance with the acronym B-R-I-C-S.
● BRICS cooperation in the past decade has expanded to include an annual programme of over 100 sectoral meetings.
Objectives:
● The BRICS seeks to deepen, broaden and intensify cooperation within the grouping and among the individual countries for more sustainable, equitable and mutually beneficial to each other.
● BRICS takes into consideration each member’s growth, development and poverty objectives to ensure relations are built on the respective country’s economic strengths and to avoid competition were.
● BRICS is emerging as a new and promising political-diplomatic entity with diverse objectives, far beyond the original objective of reforming the global financial set up.
Areas of Cooperation:
1. Economic cooperation
2. People-to-People exchange
3. Political and Security cooperation mechanism
Salient features of BRICS:
1. New front against western dominance:
● The BRICS is a group of countries having a total population of approximately 3.6 billion which makes up 40% of world population.
● The cumulative economy of the group members aggregates to around 17 trillion in nominal terms which is 22% of the world economy in current context.
2. Future power centers of the world:
● India and China are today the fastest growing economies and they are considered as the future superpower of the world.
● The group also has Russia the former USSR as a member which was one of the two superpower until 1991 when it was disintegrated for various political and economic reasons but still retain the hegemony of western, US led military dominance.
3. New global order:
● In subsequent summits since its inception the group has taken various initiatives which have changed the world economic order.
● The group pledged a corpus of $75 billion to IMF on precondition of voting rights reform in June, 2012 which is not only the end of US hegemony in institution but also a start of more democratic world order.
4. New Development Bank:
● During its fifth summit at Durban, South Africa in 2013, the member countries agreed to create a new global financial institution which finally came into existence as New Development Bank in 2015.
● The bank is today considered as rival of the World Bank and the bank’s primary focus is to lend for various development projects in member and other developing countries.
5. Contingent Reserve Agreement:
● To save members from immediate economic shocks the group has also agreed to the Contingent Reserve Agreement.
● The agreement provides protection to member countries against global liquidity pressure as all the members are developing economies.
● They are prone to increased economic volatility in the current globalized scenario and are considered rivals of the International Monetary Fund.
6. A bridge between North and South:
● The grouping has gone through a reasonably productive journey. It strove to serve as a bridge between the Global North and Global South.
7. Sustainable and inclusive growth and development:
● Structural imbalances caused by the global financial crisis of 2008 and new threats to the global economy posed by trade war and unilateral economic sanctions are yet to be resolved.
● The growing contribution of the BRICS to the world economy and the rising importance of the economic relations between the BRICS and other Emerging Market and Developing Countries (EMDCs) create an opportunity for new initiatives.
Importance of BRICS for India
1. Geo-Politics:
● Global geopolitics today represents the case of a tug of war and India finds itself in the middle of it.
● This has made it difficult for India to carve a middle path for balancing its strategic interests between the U.S and the Russia-China axis.
● Therefore, the BRICS platform provides an opportunity for India to balance the Russia-China axis.
2. Global Economic Order:
● BRICS countries shared a common objective of reforming the international financial and monetary system, with a strong desire to build a more just, and balanced international order.
● To this end, the BRICS community plays an important role in the G20, in shaping global economic policies and promoting financial stability.
3. Voice of Developing Nations:
● As the western countries are raising challenges on issues ranging from World Trade Organization to climate change, the developing countries are crippling under the onslaught of these policies.
● In recent periods, BRICS has emerged as the voice of developing countries, or the global south and playing a significant role in protecting the rights of developing countries.
4. Multilateral reforms:
● India is actively pursuing its membership for the United Nation Security Council (UNSC) and Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG).
● China forms the major roadblock in pursuing such goals.
● Therefore, BRICS provides an opportunity to actively engage with China and resolve the mutual disputes. It also helps in garnering support of other partner countries.
Challenges with the BRICS:
1. Heterogeneity:
● It is claimed by critics that heterogeneity (variable/diverse nature of countries) of the BRICS nations with its diverse interests possess a threat to the viability of the grouping.
2. China Centric nature of the group:
● All the countries in the BRICS group trade with China more than each other, therefore it is blamed as a platform to promote China’s interest.
● Balancing trade deficit with China is a huge challenge for other partner nations.
3. Regional model:
● Amidst, global slowdown, trade war and protectionism, the critical challenge for the BRICS consists in the development of a new global model of governance which should not be unipolar but inclusive and constructive.
● The goal should be to avoid a negative scenario of unfolding globalization and to start a complicated merging of the global growing economies without distorting or breaking the single financial and economic continuum of the world.
4. In-effective:
● China’s economic rise has created a serious imbalance within BRICS.
● Also, the group has not done enough to assist the Global South to win their optimal support for their agenda.
5. Hostile members:
● The future of the group seems a little gloomy as the two biggest economies India and China of the group are having various contentious issues between them.
● The two countries are often seen as rivals on various global forums which degenerate the confidence between each other.
6. Sanctions on Russia:
● In recent times the global slowdown, sanctions on Russia since it annexed Crimea and political instability in Brazil has also added burden on BRICS economy.
● Russian participation has been seen through the lens of its recent invasion of Ukraine.
WAY FORWARD:
1. Reform of multilateral institutions:
● To pursue reform of multilateral institutions ranging from the United Nations, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to the World Trade Organization and now even the World Health Organization.
2. Resolve to combat terrorism:
● Terrorism is an international phenomenon affecting Europe, Africa, Asia and other parts of the world.
● Tragic developments concerning Afghanistan have helped to focus attention sharply on this overarching theme, stressing the need to bridge the gap between rhetoric and action.
● China, for example, feels little hesitation in supporting clear-cut denunciations of terrorist groups, even as its backing of Pakistan, which is heavily enmeshed with a host of international terrorist groups, remains steadfast.
3. Promoting technological and digital solutions for the Sustainable Development Goals:
● Digital tools have helped a world adversely hit by the pandemic, and India has been at the forefront of using new technological tools to improve governance.
For BRICS to remain relevant over the next decade, each of its members must make a realistic assessment of the initiative’s opportunities and inherent limitations. BRICS nations should strive for peaceful and politico-diplomatic settlement of crisis and conflict in various regions of the world.