Twenty years on, BRICS is the most influential platform for emerging economies have, and New Delhi has proved it. A bloc producing half of global GDP growth, moving $1.2 trillion in internal trade and steadily building payment channels beyond Washington's reach is already reshaping the rules of the global economy, not just complaining about them. Unilateral sanctions and punitive tariffs deserve the strong condemnation this declaration delivered.

This summit was a win for India's careful balancing act, not a coronation for an anti-Western bloc. Getting Iran, the UAE, China and Russia to sign one declaration took real diplomatic muscle, and Modi was right to keep the language neutral rather than naming names directly. But consensus reached by dodging the hardest geopolitical fights, including Ukraine, shows a group still long on global ambition and short on concrete answers about what comes next.