Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday announced India’s full support for the expansion of BRICS membership in his remarks at the plenary session of the summit in Johannesburg.
This is the first time India has voiced such clear support for expanding BRICS membership outside its present clique of five countries.
“India fully supports the expansion of the BRICS membership. And welcomes moving forward with consensus in this,” the Prime Minister said, echoing the formulation permanent members of the UN Security Council use while talking about expanding the P5 to make it more representative.
Till now, the external affairs ministry has always maintained that India has an open mind on the issue of BRICS expansion. In fact, India is considered a holdout country on this count in certain quarters. While China has been the keenest advocate of BRICS expansion followed by Russia, India and Brazil have had reservations. Publicly, India has always maintained its “open mind” position while Brazil has changed its view more than once.
New Delhi’s main apprehension apparently stems from China’s desire to dominate global governance and the possibility of Beijing using its influence over countries to call the shots in BRICS if membership is expanded.
In his address at the plenary session, Chinese President Xi Jingping said: “I am glad to see the growing enthusiasm of developing countries about BRICS cooperation, and quite a number of them have applied to join the BRICS cooperation mechanism. We need to act on the BRICS spirit of openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation to bring more countries into the BRICS family, so as to pool our wisdom and strength to make global governance more just and equitable," he said.
India, according to sources, is likely to be guided by the objective of incorporating strategic partners as new members. Sources claimed that India took the lead in forging consensus on membership criteria and selection of new members at the Leaders’ Retreat hosted by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday night.
