(This is the second part of a two-part series on whether India should participate in the BRICS Summit due in September. You may like to read the first part here.)
As acronyms go, BRICS is both an apt and ominous name for the transcontinental five-nation platform comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Apt because BRICS, which rhymes with bricks, suggests the group can be the building block for a new influential structure of developing countries challenging the domination of the developed West in the post-World War II world order. Ominous because bricks, if weakly made, are vulnerable to breaking.
BRICS in its very name carries the possibility of its fragmentation. The possibility does exist because of the absence of strong internal cohesion within the group. Perhaps the most manifest source of brittleness of BRICS is the current deepening mistrust between India and China, which even carries the seeds of an armed conflict over the prolonged military stand-off at Doklam.
Also Read: Doklam: Can Swadeshi Sentiment Reduce India-China Trade Deficit?
Speculation Over PM Modi’s Visit
There is already intense speculation, both in India and China, over whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the ninth BRICS Summit, scheduled to be held in Xiamen, in China’s Fujian province, from September 3-5.
It is being said he might skip the summit and send a junior representative. If the situation near the India-Bhutan-China trijunction, or elsewhere along the long India-China border, worsens in the coming days, there is even the likelihood of India boycotting the BRICS summit.
Xiamen, on south-eastern coast of China overlooking Taiwan, has a special significance for Xi since this is where he first made his mark as a super-effective leader, becoming the city’s deputy mayor in 1985. Thereafter, until 2002, he spent seventeen years in Fujian in various positions in the Communist Party.
Also Read: As an Indian in China, I Can Tell You What’s In Their Hearts
India’s Absence Will Hit BRICS
India’s boycott and open criticism of the ambitious Belt and Road global summit Xi had hosted in Beijing in May this year has already added considerable bitterness to India-China ties.
Modi’s no-show at the BRICS meet in Xiamen would not only further embitter the Chinese leadership, but also place a question mark over the group’s future itself.
Thus, BRICS faces an existential question as it approaches the second decade of its existence (it was established in 2009 as BRIC; South Africa became its fifth member in 2010). Will it survive, and how long will it survive, in its present form as an exclusive five-member group?
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Why PM Modi Should Attend BRICS Summit
- Boycotting the BRICS summit or low-level representation will certainly annoy China which is hosting the meet for the first time.
- India’s hostility towards BRICS stems from that fact that Pakistan could be an entrant into BRICS-Plus with the support of Russia, Brazil, and South Africa.
- Opposing China on BRICS-Plus policy doesn’t bode well with India and Pakistan being inducted into SCO recently.
- By opposing BRICS-Plus in order to isolate Pakistan, India faces the danger of isolating itself from developing countries.
- Even Russia may not support India on the issue of boycotting BRICS.
Xi’s Dream of BRICS Completing Golden Decade
Ironically, the likelihood of a Modi-minus BRICS summit has surfaced at a time when President Xi Jinping has been actively working on the idea of BRICS-Plus.
Addressing a meeting of the foreign ministers of the five member-nations in Beijing in June this year ─ significantly, India was represented not by Sushma Swaraj, minister of external affairs, but by her deputy VK Singh ─ Xi confidently said, “China is ready to shoulder the important mission of opening up of the second decade of BRICS cooperation. China is ready for discussion on BRICS-Plus cooperation pattern and forms.”
His confidence was also evident when he refuted the critics’ observation that the group’s internal difficulties have “faded its colour” in the first ten years of its existence.
He asserted that BRICS is indeed headed for a “new golden decade”.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has also reiterated the idea of BRICS-Plus, saying China would “hold outreach dialogues with other major developing countries and establish extensive partnerships and widen our circle of friends to turn BRICS into the most impactful platform for South-South cooperation.”
Also Read: Doklam’s Big Picture: Neither Asia nor the World is China-Centric
Apprehensions on Pakistan’s Entry
India has rarely expressed such confidence about BRICS’ future. If anything, India’s leaders and influential strategic experts see BRICS increasingly as a China-centric and China-dominated platform.
Moreover, they are highly inimical to the idea of BRICS-Plus because Pakistan is one of the new countries China seeks to include in the group, with the support of Russia, Brazil and South Africa.
In addition to Pakistan, China would also like to see other major developing countries and emerging economies from different continents such as South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Turkey, Iran, Bangladesh and the Philippines (from Asia), Nigeria and Egypt (from Africa) and Mexico (from Latin America).
One does not have to be partial to China to recognise that the entry of these potential new members into BRICS ─ which are collectively described as the Next Eleven, given the large size of their populations and their highly promising growth prospects ─ will make the organisation more representative of the aspirations of developing countries.
However, the mere fact that Pakistan could be one of the new entrants into BRICS-Plus is making the right-wingers in India see red. They also see several others in the Next Eleven to be pro-China.
All in all, they view BRICS-Plus as a way of decreasing India’s standing in the organisation and, simultaneously, increasing China’s position and clout in it.
PM Wrongly Advised on Belt and Road Summit
Prime Minister Modi was wrongly advised by his team of advisors into boycotting the Belt and Road summit in Beijing and criticising a super-ambitious Chinese project that is gaining growing support globally.
In the context of BRICS, I hope he is not once again wrongly advised into boycotting the upcoming Xiamen summit and opposing the concept of BRICS-Plus.
There is simply no basis for opposing China on BRICS-Plus because, just two months ago, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) became SCO-Plus by inducting, at its summit in Astana, both India and Pakistan as its newest members. It showed the hollowness of the Modi government’s claim of “isolating Pakistan globally”.
India and China are already together in both the New Development Bank (also known as the BRICS Development Bank, which is headed by KV Kamath, a renowned Indian banker) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), in which India is the second-largest shareholder.
India, along with China, is also an influential member of G-20 ─ which itself is a creation of the expansion of G-7 (a group of seven western powers plus Japan). Here, Modi should know that just as G-20 has come to matter far more than G-7, similarly BRICS-Plus will also soon become far more influential than G-7, thus ending the global domination of the West and announcing the emergence of a truly multipolar world order.
Also Read: China Asks India: What If We Enter Kalapani or Kashmir?
India’s Self-Isolation
By opposing BRICS-Plus in order to isolate Pakistan, India faces the danger of isolating itself from a large number of developing countries. Even Russia, India’s longstanding friend, will surely not support the Modi government on this issue.
Of course, there are some differences among BRICS members and its potential new entrants over how to change the global order, how to reform the United Nations, UNSC World Bank and IMF, and how to reorient the global-regional trade and investment arrangements.
There are also legitimate differences over BRICS itself. But these differences cannot justify India’s myopic self-isolation by moving away from the BRICS platform ─ or by trying to create a parallel such platform. Just as the Modi government’s ill-advised idea of creating a SAARC minus Pakistan is a complete non-starter, any idea of creating a BRICS minus China would be silly.
China’s rise is a reality India has to reckon with, just as India’s progress is a reality China has to deal with. Our two great nations have to live together and work together. There is simply no alternative other than accepting this fundamental truth of our times. As a first step in accepting this truth, Modi and Xi Jinping should urgently find ways of resolving the Doklam crisis peacefully. But let’s make no mistake: finding ways of achieving this goal will become far more difficult if Prime Minister Modi chooses not to attend the BRICS summit in Xiamen next month.
(The writer, who was an aide to India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is chairman of the Observer Research Foundation Mumbai. He can be reached @SudheenKulkarni . This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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