International Relations

BRIC was conceived by British Economist Jim O’Neill signifying the four most dynamic emerging economies. It has over time evolved as the BRICS grouping with the inclusion of South Africa. It has evolved as a symbol of shifting global landscape. It is the acronym coined to associate five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The BRICS members are known for their significant influence on regional affairs. It represents over 40% of the global population and around 22% of Global GDP. Four out of five members are among the world’s ten largest countries by population and by area, except for South Africa, the twenty-fourth in both.

Economic Divergence And Political Differences

However, scholars like Joseph Nye have criticised it as BRICS without mortar, emphasising the internal fractures and divergences within the grouping. Some of these can be identified as divergences in long term economic trajectory and political differences:

Economic Divergences

1. China: China’s share of global GDP has increased from 7.7% in 2001 to 17.4% in 2019, according to IMF data. Even the arrival of a global pandemic has been a chance for China to outperform its fellow BRICS that have had much larger and more sustained epidemics.
2. India: India’s response to COVID-19 has been among the most stringent as the country sought to quell an epidemic that has resulted in the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases —8.3 million — and third-highest death toll — 123,000. India’s GDP fell by 7.5% in July-September, the economy in a technical recession for the first time ever with horrific declines in some sectors including a 50.3% contraction in construction.
3. Brazil: Like India, Brazil has been hit hard by the pandemic. Brazil has had the third most cases and, at over 160,000, the second most fatalities. But unlike India, President Jair Bolsonaro’s government decided against severe lockdowns and turned on fiscal taps, with a stimulus totalling 8.3% of GDP. This creates a threat of a widening fiscal deficit in an already strained economy.
4. Russia: Russia has struggled to broaden the structure of its economic growth away from the volatile energy sector, while sanctions were put in place by the U.S. and European Union in 2014 following Russia’s occupation of Crimea, with further measures imposed in 2017 in response to Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
5. South Africa: South Africa’s ballooning debt burden has adversely affected the health of its economy. It also suffers from lower credit rating by global agencies signifying the mellow investment climate. Economic growth is structurally weak despite a decade of government spending, which has seen a public debt-to-GDP rise from 30.1% in 2010 to 62.2% in 2019, while unemployment is around 30%.

Political Differences

1. Political diversity: China is a one-party state; Russia’s governance is highly centralized; Brazil, India, and South Africa are democracies with significant corruption levels and/or ethnic strife still to deal with. Following is an effort to elucidate country-specific cases:

1. Brazil: Brazil’s political life is wracked by widespread corruption, politicized courts, and fierce divisions within the political elite.
2. Russia: While Russia remains a partial electoral democracy, Russian citizens’ adherence to democratic values and procedures is low. Furthermore, nationalist tendencies within Russian society have become radicalized. Prompted by the developments in Ukraine and the search for a ‘fifth column’ among the liberals and Westernizers, human rights activists have been marginalized and tensions within Russian society have increased.
3. India: India has maintained its credentials of a robust democracy but the multiplicity of cross-cutting cleavages and corruption are underlying faultlines in the political system.
4. China: is the only one of the BRICS to be an outright one-party dictatorship. The government has continued to be responsive to a wide range of social interests and to implement measures to improve public service provision. At the same time, the government tightened the screws on any form of dissent. China features an absence of political and civil rights, competent government, and dizzyingly-fast socio-economic development.
5. South Africa: Ethnic and familial nepotism is rife in South Africa, going right up to the former president, Jacob Zuma, who used public funds to renovate his private home. The country remains racially polarized, with low levels of trust between the country’s historically-defined racial groups and with most South Africans still living in very racially homogeneous neighbourhoods.

2.India-China bilateral issues: Given the disruptions and instabilities that mark India-China relation, for example, the recent border skirmishes at Galwan valley; there is always a threat of derailment of negotiations at a plurilateral platform like BRICS. 3. Similarly, another emerging axis like the Pakistan-Russia axis or the Moscow-Beijing-Islamabad axis may create divergences with Indian interests and adversely affect negotiations. Further, the fact remains that BRICS is still far from achieving its initial goals: reform of global financial governance, the democratisation of the United Nations, and the expansion of the Security Council. It is so, partially because two of its members (China and Russia) do not want the other three members (India, South Africa and Brazil) to obtain parity in the global pecking order. Notwithstanding these divergences and differences, efforts can be made to enable BRICS to achieve its potential:

1. First, the New Development Bank (NDB), the grouping’s flagship achievement, needs to grow as “a global development finance institution”.
2. Second, with a successful Contingent Reserve Arrangement in the bag, BRICS governments should also seek to establish a local currency, Bond Fund.
3. Thirdly, the proposal to launch a credit rating agency should also see the light of the day.
4. Fourthly, following up on the decisions taken at the previous summit, operationalisation of the Partnership on New Industrial Revolution should be prioritised. It is focused on cooperation in digitalisation, industrialisation, innovation, inclusiveness and investment. This partnership can be concretised by establishing industrial and science parks, innovation centres and business incubators.
5. Fifth, the stress on developing people-to-people interaction should be sustained, with each chair-country drawing up a calendar of activities to strengthen links of culture, arts, sports, media and academic exchange.

Cooperation under the aegis of BRICS not only signified the economic potential of emerging economies but also the pinnacle of South-South bonding. Against the backdrop of the continued Western dominance of the world order, development cooperation and enhanced partnership in kindred areas of technology and innovation among BRICS countries will help create a more symmetrical world. It can also act as a bulwark against the rising walls of protectionism and an inward-looking world view driven by deglobalisation and COVID induced economic shock. As PM Modi emphasises, if BRICS can set and lead the agenda of the global world order, a Golden decade can be created for humankind. Alternately, BRICS should stand for “business, regional integration, innovation, culture and statesmanship.”