5 min readSep 12, 2026 06:44 AM IST First published on: Sep 12, 2026 at 06:44 AM ISTCongress leaders were griping at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent “naraz fufa” (sulking uncle) jibe. Modi’s jibe meant that, just like in family functions where there will always be an elderly uncle who finds reasons to be upset, some leaders in the Opposition always find excuses to be critical about things. Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram’s comments on the 18th BRICS Summit being held in Delhi betray the “naraz fufa” tendency, if not ignorance about current global geopolitics. Normally, countries take pride in hosting important multilateral events. But for Chidambaram, the BRICS summit is a useless exercise. “We are part of BRICS, we are part of SCO, we are part of G20, and we are part of Quad. What benefits are we getting out of that? I can’t see,” he cribbed indignantly in an interaction with a news agency.BRICS, with 11 countries as members, another 10 as partners, and dozens more waiting to join, has emerged as the voice of the Global South. In the past two decades, it has grown in size and influence and boasts today of representing 50 per cent of the world’s population, 40 per cent of the global economy and 26 per cent of global trade. In comparison, the G7 grouping of major Western powers accounts for less than 10 per cent of the population and around 44 per cent of global GDP.AdvertisementIndia emerged as an important balancing power for many countries in the Global South as the US opted to step back from its active role in the world. It assumed the BRICS chair in January for the fourth time. Over the past seven months, the country hosted more than 350 high-level engagements across important pillars like political and security, economics and culture and people-to-people engagement. It has contributed to the advancement of the BRICS agenda of regional cooperation and development. India has hosted these summits thrice before – in 2012 during the UPA regime and in 2016 and 2021 under the present NDA government. When the summit was hosted in 2012, the heads of the five member countries were present. But in 2016, the Modi government took special interest in inviting the heads of six BIMSTEC neighbours as outreach members. While the 16th summit in Russia in 2024 saw the participation of the highest number of heads of state so far, the Delhi summit is expected to exceed that record.The Modi government adopted an innovative approach in choosing the expansion of the BRICS acronym as themes for the summits that it hosted. Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions was the theme for the 2016 summit, while the theme for this year’s summit is Building Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability. In the face of various economic, technological and trade-related disruptions, nations have to develop resilience of the highest order to tackle them. As the deep-tech era of artificial intelligence, robotics, semiconductors and biotechnology dawns, innovation is the key to national self-reliance while cooperation is necessary to mitigate the divide between tech haves and tech have-nots. A serious ecological crisis looms large over most countries, with El Niño threatening food and water security, giving sustainability issues greater urgency for the highly populous Global South.The global order built in the aftermath of World War II stands largely dissolved today. A new order is yet to take shape, and the interregnum, marred by conflicts and disorder, looks exactly like how Antonio Gramsci, the Italian statesman of the last century, described it as the “time for monsters”. That makes the functioning of any grouping difficult. The G20, the world’s most expansive and powerful group, found building consensus a challenge since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out. India played a catalytic role — in Bali in 2022 and in New Delhi in 2023 — in ensuring that consensus was achieved in the G20 despite tensions and disagreements.AdvertisementThis BRICS summit is being held under the shadow of the US-Iran conflict, which dragged several other Gulf nations like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, also members of BRICS, into its vortex. The leaders of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE converge at the summit in New Delhi for the first time after the conflict broke out in late February. Given India’s experience in managing conflicting interests and also given the enormous goodwill and bonhomie that PM Modi enjoys with leaders of all these nations, one can hope that the summit will succeed in coming out with a unanimous declaration.The writer is national vice-president, BJP and president, India Foundation