The article examines India’s foreign policy in the context of its membership in BRICS as well as in the Quad and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It highlights New Delhi’s diplomatic balancing act in developing cooperation with various states, which results in the absence of firm alliance ties with any superpower and a tendency to construct diverse, often transactional, forms of partnership. The author argues that BRICS is often portrayed as a platform for de-Westernisation and multipolarity, but in practice it functions as an institutional instrument primarily used by China and Russia, even though individual members may pursue their own particular goals. New Delhi accepts the idea of reforming international institutions and a polycentric world, yet it fears Chinese dominance and pursues a policy of equidistance: India cooperates with Russia while simultaneously deepening ties with the United States and regional partners (the Quad, I2U2) as a counterweight to Beijing. In this context, BRICS does not form a unified, coherent alternative to the West, so prospects for reshaping the global order are multivariate and uncertain. Consequently, BRICS’s role – largely because of India’s independent foreign policy – will be shaped by competing interests within the grouping and by the external policies of great powers (notably China, Russia, and the USA), leaving the future architecture of global security an open question.
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