NEW DELHI: India fully backs the expansion of Brics (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) on the basis of consensus, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a summit of the five-nation bloc on Wednesday in the face of a push by China to enlarge the grouping. Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi gestures at the plenary session during the 2023 BRICS Summit at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg (via REUTERS)

PM Modi suggested enhanced collaboration between Brics member states in areas such as space, education and technology, including the use of solutions developed by India which he said can help make the bloc a “future-ready organisation”. He offered to share platforms developed by India with other Brics members.

“India fully supports the expansion of Brics membership, and welcomes moving forward on this with consensus,” he said, speaking in Hindi at the open plenary session of the summit in Johannesburg. Modi noted that when Brics was chaired by India in 2016, the grouping was defined as “Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions”.

“After seven years, we can say Brics will be ‘Breaking barriers, Revitalising economies, Inspiring innovation, Creating opportunities and Shaping the future’,” he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who spoke after Modi at the session, reiterated Beijing’s push for speedy expansion of Brics to make global governance more equitable.

“I am glad to see the growing enthusiasm of developing countries about participating in Brics cooperation and quite a number of them have applied to join the Brics cooperation mechanism,” Xi said, speaking in Mandarin.

Xi added, “We need to...accelerate the Brics expansion process to bring more countries into the Brics family so as to pool our strengths [and] our wisdom to make global governance more just and equitable.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his interventions at the session, said Brics members are still discussing the expansion. “Hopefully, we will find a clear solution to this matter as we discuss it amongst ourselves as Brics leaders,” he said after Modi’s speech.

People familiar with the matter said the Indian side’s efforts on the Brics expansion at an informal session of the leaders on Tuesday night were guided by the objective of including India’s “strategic partners” as new members.

The Indian side took the lead in forging consensus on criteria for expanding Brics and selecting new members at the leaders’ retreat, an informal session that allows for unstructured discussions, the people said.

The session lasted more than the scheduled two hours and was followed by a dinner hosted by Ramaphosa. The people described the developments at the leaders’ retreat as “significant”.

Prior to Modi’s departure for Johannesburg, foreign secretary Vinay Kwatra had said on Monday that India is approaching the issue of expanding Brics with “a positive intent and an open mind”. Kwatra insisted that there will have to be “full consensus” on the expansion and the guiding principles for this.

Some 20 to 30 countries have expressed interest in joining Brics, and Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have emerged as leading candidates. India’s greatest concern about the expansion is that Brics shouldn’t become a China-centric grouping, especially at a time when relations between New Delhi and Beijing are at their lowest ebb due to the standoff on the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

China has aggressively pushed efforts to expand Brics to make the grouping a counterpoint to Western dominance of world affairs. It has been backed in these moves by Russia, grappling with its diplomatic isolation because of the Ukraine war.

In his speech at the open plenary session, Modi also pitched for enhanced cooperation between Brics members in space, technology, digital infrastructure and education.

As the member states work on the Brics satellite constitution, they can consider creating a Brics space exploration consortium that can work on space research and weather monitoring, he said.

Cooperation in education, skill development and technology can make Brics a “future-ready organisation”, he said while citing India’s creation of solutions such as Diksha (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) for education in remote areas, Bhashini, an AI-based language platform, the CoWIN platform for vaccination, and digital public infrastructure or the “India Stack”.

“Diversity is a great strength of India. The solution to any problem in India comes out of the test of this diversity. That’s why these solutions can be easily implemented in any corner of the world,” Modi said while offering to share all platforms developed by India with Brics members.

Brics members can also do skill mapping to identify each other’s strengths and cooperate on the preservation of different species of big cats found in the five countries, he said.

Modi also sought the support of Brics states for India’s proposal to give full membership of the G20 to the African Union. “We have also proposed permanent membership of the G20 to the African Union. I am sure all the Brics partners are also together in the G20 and will support our proposal,” he said.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rezaul H Laskar Rezaul H Laskar is the Foreign Affairs Editor at Hindustan Times. His interests include movies and music. ...view detail