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BRICS Summit in Goa A Test of Host PM Modi’s Political Shrewdness

The BRICS meet in Goa will be followed by an outreach to the BIMSTEC leaders, an innovative initiative in diplomacy.

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The BRICS summit meeting in Goa on 15 October will be followed by the out-reach to the BIMSTEC leaders on 16 October and this will be an innovative initiative in regional diplomacy. The aborted SAARC summit that Pakistan was to host is a case in point.

BRICS includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and began in 2008 as a group of four – excluding South Africa.

The term BRIC was coined by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs in 2001 to refer to emerging economies and the macro-economic growth investment opportunities they represented.

However it took the four nations a few years before they could  find the political consensus to form the group – BRIC.

The not so lighter vein quip at the time was that it was a case of BRIC sans mortar – given the many divergences among the four nations.

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Snapshot
  • BRICS includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and began in 2008 as a group of four – excluding South Africa.
  • At their third summit in China in 2011, the leaders invited South Africa to join, becoming the BRICS.
  • The Goa meeting has an innovative sub-text in that it has an outreach summit for the BIMSTEC leaders – Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand and in addition, Nepal and Bhutan.
  • The Goa summit comes at a time when the three major members – Russia, India and China have their own political and strategic priorities to pursue.
  • The final communiqué from Goa will also be an indicator of the political skill of PM Modi and his principal sherpas – NSA Doval and Foreign Secretary Jaishankar.
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The BRIC leaders' first meeting was held in Sapporo on the eve of the G8 Toyako-Hokkaido Summit in 2008 and their first standalone summit was the following year in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

At their third summit in China in 2011, the leaders invited South Africa to join, thus becoming the BRICS.

Over the years, the BRICS agenda has become wide-spectrum and has extended beyond the financial-trade context to embrace a wide range of summit-level issues.

These include global governance, development policies, peace and security, energy and climate change, and social issues. Goa is the 8th BRICS summit and India had hosted the last  such meeting in 2012.

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The BRICS meet in Goa will be followed by an outreach to the BIMSTEC leaders, an innovative initiative in diplomacy.
Girls in Goa look at a poster of the BRICS summit 2016. (Photo: AP)
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The Goa meeting has an innovative sub-text in that it has an outreach summit for the BIMSTEC leaders – that is  Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand as Bay of Bengal littorals and in addition, Nepal and Bhutan.

While the five BRICS nations have their own distinctive capabilities and constraints – China is the world’s second largest economy, Russia has a proven military profile that it does not hesitate to deploy and India is among the fastest growing economies – they have a long term vision of evolving a non-US led fiscal and economic framework.

Despite their bi-lateral differences (India and China ) or internal vulnerabilities (Brazil and South Africa) or other priorities (Russia), their track record in the financial and regulatory sector has been modest but commendable.

The BRICS Development Bank mooted at earlier summits has now been formalized as the New Development Bank (NDB) and while it will not displace the World Bank anytime soon, or for that matter the ADB (Asian Development Bank), it represents a commitment that is encouraging.
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The BRICS meet in Goa will be followed by an outreach to the BIMSTEC leaders, an innovative initiative in diplomacy.
Workers setting up flags of Brazil and India for the BRICS summit. (Photo: AP)
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In like fashion, the need for an alternative credit rating agency has been on the anvil and Goa may formalize the decision in this regard.

However the Goa summit comes at a time when the three major members – Russia, India and China have their own political and strategic priorities to pursue.

Russia under President Putin is now engaged in a complex stand-off with the US and its allies over Syria and other issues; China is smarting over the South China Sea setback at the  international tribunal; and India is focused on terrorism and the perfidious role being played by Pakistan.

And paradoxically, each of these three countries has a divergent and at time adversarial position on matters such as terrorism and the contour of certain bi-laterals.

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The BRICS meet in Goa will be followed by an outreach to the BIMSTEC leaders, an innovative initiative in diplomacy.
Posters welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping for the BRICS summit in Goa. (Photo: AP)
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It is expected that while there will be considerable consensus on the economic and fiscal agenda in the final Goa document – the pol-mil and strategic issues may be problematic.

Currently Moscow, Beijing and Delhi have many dissonances in relation to global and regional issues.

Hence an intense lowest-common-denominator bargaining may be on the cards before a mutually acceptable textual mortar is crafted.

In summary, the final communiqué from Goa will also be an indicator of the political perspicacity of the host Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the negotiating skills of his principal sherpas – NSA Doval and Foreign Secretary Jaishankar.

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More than the elusive mortar that BRICS is seeking, an interesting pattern is emerging in relation to the outreach grouping of BIMSTEC.  Chinese President Xi Jinping was in Dhaka on a state visit to Bangladesh – and this was the first such visit after 30 years.

It is expected that China will provide loans or funding of almost $23 billion to assist  Dhaka in its infrastructure and connectivity projects.

While all of this will be oriented towards the one-belt, one-road (OBOR) objective that is the central focus of Beijing, it is also a reflection of the very constructive diplomacy that the Hasina government has been able to pursue.

For the Modi team, the abiding reality is that China is able to generously fund Pakistan and Bangladesh as part of the OBOR and provide little empathy to India’s concern about issues like state support to terrorism.

And the strains in the Delhi-Moscow relationship which have seen a rare public admonishment are indicative of  the constraints under which India is now having to carry out its diplomatic space and related leverages.

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The BRICS meet in Goa will be followed by an outreach to the BIMSTEC leaders, an innovative initiative in diplomacy.
File photo of PM Modi meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2015 summit. (Photo: AP)
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Prevailing upon the summit leaders to study the Bangladesh model for sub-regional engagement that is win-win, merits deeper policy review.

This could well be the glue-stick to bind some parts of BRICS.  Over the last five years, Dhaka has made steady progress in acquiring some remarkable human security indicators. Offering this as the alternative to what Pakistan could aspire towards may sound politically incorrect and unpalatable to GHQ Rawalpindi.

But the truth is often bitter!

(The writer is a leading expert on strategic affairs. He is currently Director, Society for Policy Studies. He can be reached at @theUdayB. 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.)

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

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Topics:  Russia   Goa   China  

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