BRICS 2026: From Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam to Humanity First, Reimagining BRICS in a World Between Blocs

As wars expose the limits of the existing international order, India's BRICS presidency offers an opportunity to ask a more consequential question: can a multipolar world become more cooperative, rather than simply more divided?

The World Is More Connected—and Less Governable

The world has never been more interconnected. It has also rarely felt this fractured.

A war in one region can disrupt energy markets thousands of kilometres away. A shipping route can become a geopolitical fault line. A tariff decision can reshape supply chains across continents. Technology can connect societies while simultaneously becoming an instrument of strategic competition.

The problem is not simply that the world is experiencing more conflicts. It is that the institutions designed to manage an interconnected world are struggling to keep pace with it.

The United Nations remains indispensable, yet its capacity to act decisively can be constrained by geopolitical rivalry. The WTO remains central to global commerce, yet trade is increasingly shaped by tariffs, sanctions, export controls and national-security calculations. The IMF and World Bank remain vital, while questions of representation and governance have become increasingly difficult to ignore.

These institutions are not irrelevant.

They are increasingly insufficient.

That distinction explains much of the significance of BRICS today.

BRICS Is a Symptom of a Changing Order

BRICS began as an economic idea. It has evolved into a platform for cooperation on trade, finance, development, technology, energy and global governance.

Its expansion has given it considerable demographic and economic weight. But it has also made it more diverse—and therefore harder to define.

There is no single BRICS ideology.

There is no single Global South position.

Its members have different political systems, economic priorities and strategic relationships. Some are closely aligned with the West; others are not. Some are competitors. Some have sharply different positions on active conflicts.

That is precisely why describing BRICS as simply an “anti-Western bloc” is inadequate.

BRICS is better understood as an expression of a demand for greater strategic agency.

Countries want more voice in institutions that shape their future. They want greater choice in trade, finance and technology. They want resilience against external shocks without necessarily abandoning global interdependence.

The question is whether BRICS can convert that demand into something constructive.

When War Enters the Room

The current conflicts in West Asia make that question particularly urgent.

The expanded BRICS framework includes countries with deeply divergent strategic interests in the region, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Their presence around the same multilateral table does not erase those differences.

It highlights them.

Earlier this year, BRICS foreign ministers were unable to issue a joint statement amid disagreements linked to the Iran conflict.

This could be read as evidence of weakness.

But it also reveals something more fundamental: the Global South is not a geopolitical bloc.

There is no common position on every war, every great power or every global institution.

A credible multilateral platform cannot manufacture consensus where none exists. Its real value may lie in creating space for dialogue and practical cooperation despite disagreement.

That is a harder model of multilateralism.

It may also be the model the world needs.

Cooperation Without Alignment

The old assumption was that international cooperation required convergence.

The emerging reality may be different.

Countries can cooperate on energy while competing strategically. They can trade extensively while disagreeing politically. They can work together on technology, climate or development while maintaining very different positions on security.

This is already visible in India's own foreign policy.

India engages multiple geopolitical centres simultaneously. It participates in BRICS, the G20, the Quad, the SCO and other frameworks while maintaining relationships across competing power centres.

This is not necessarily inconsistency.

It is strategic autonomy adapted to a multipolar world.

India's opportunity is therefore not to make BRICS another instrument of bloc politics.

It is to demonstrate that multipolarity does not have to mean permanent confrontation.

The Real Meaning of Resilience

India's BRICS 2026 theme—“Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability,” anchored in “Humanity First”—acquires greater significance against this geopolitical backdrop.

Resilience is usually discussed in terms of economies, infrastructure and supply chains.

But every crisis eventually reaches people.

Energy disruptions affect households. Trade disruptions affect jobs. Food insecurity affects communities. War affects migration, livelihoods and human security.

A resilient economy therefore requires resilient people.

That means education, livelihoods, healthcare, digital capability, social cohesion and opportunity. It means ensuring that women, young people and vulnerable communities are not simply protected from disruption, but equipped to participate in recovery and growth.

Resilience is ultimately human.

And this is where “Humanity First” can become more than a diplomatic phrase.

Innovation Must Have a Purpose

The same applies to innovation.

Innovation is not only artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing or financial technology.

It is also a farmer finding a better way to conserve water. A community creating a sustainable livelihood. A low-cost healthcare model reaching people who were previously excluded.

As AI transforms economies and societies, the important question is not only what technology can do.

It is who benefits from what technology can do.

BRICS has an opportunity to place human purpose alongside technological capability.

The test of innovation should not be novelty alone.

It should be whether it expands access, reduces vulnerability, creates opportunity and improves lives.

From Governments to People

There is another dimension of cooperation that BRICS can deepen: people-to-people engagement.

International relations are usually conducted government to government. But durable relationships are also built person to person, institution to institution and community to community.

Young people can collaborate across borders. Women entrepreneurs can share livelihood and business models. Researchers can exchange knowledge. Artists and writers can build cultural understanding. Social innovators can adapt solutions across societies.

These may appear softer than trade agreements or financial mechanisms.

They are not.

They are the infrastructure of trust.

Government agreements can change with political circumstances. Relationships between societies can endure.

If BRICS wants to become more than a geopolitical forum, it should invest in these human connections.

The Geopolitics of Everyday Life

The next phase of geopolitical competition will not be fought only over territory.

It will also be fought over the systems that sustain everyday life: energy, food, critical minerals, technology, data, AI, logistics, financial networks and supply chains.

The wars and disruptions of recent years have demonstrated how quickly economic interdependence can become strategic vulnerability.

This makes cooperation in these areas more than an economic agenda.

It is an agenda of strategic resilience.

The debate around BRICS' financial architecture illustrates the point. The issue should not be reduced to whether the dollar will be replaced.

The more important question is whether countries can have greater choice in payments, financing and trade while remaining integrated with the global economy.

The objective should be resilience, not rupture.

Beyond the Old Institutions

BRICS should not be imagined as a replacement for the UN, WTO, IMF or World Bank.

Nor should those institutions dismiss BRICS as a temporary challenge.

Both approaches miss the larger story.

The world is moving towards overlapping systems of cooperation. The UN will remain central to global legitimacy. The WTO will remain important to trade. The G20 will continue to bring major economies together. Regional and minilateral groupings will address specific challenges.

BRICS is another layer in this emerging architecture.

Its value will depend on whether these layers reinforce one another or fragment the international system further.

The real opportunity is not institutional replacement, but institutional renewal.

BRICS can push for greater representation while strengthening practical cooperation of its own.

From Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam to Humanity First

This is where India's civilisational idea becomes relevant to a very contemporary geopolitical problem.

Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam—the world is one family—does not mean that differences disappear.

It means recognising that interconnectedness creates responsibility.

Humanity First does not mean that national interests disappear.

It means recognising that national prosperity and security increasingly depend on global stability.

The two ideas therefore need not be seen as idealism detached from geopolitics.

They can be understood as a philosophy of interdependence.

If our economies are connected, our vulnerabilities are connected.

If our technologies are connected, our responsibilities are connected.

If our security is interconnected, our choices have consequences beyond our borders.

The question is whether international cooperation can catch up with that reality.

India's Moment

India's opportunity in BRICS is not simply to speak for the Global South.

It is to help demonstrate what the Global South can contribute to the world.

That contribution should not be another rigid bloc.

It should be a more representative, resilient and human-centred approach to multilateralism.

A system in which national interests remain legitimate, but cooperation remains possible across differences.

A system in which emerging economies seek greater voice without seeking exclusion.

A system in which technology serves people rather than simply markets.

A system in which resilience is measured not merely by the strength of infrastructure, but by the strength of communities.

And a system in which diplomacy remains possible even when consensus is not.

The Question Beyond New Delhi

The significance of BRICS should ultimately not be measured only by its economic size, membership or ability to challenge established powers.

Its deeper significance lies in the question it raises:

What kind of international order should emerge as power becomes more distributed?

The answer cannot simply be another hierarchy.

Nor can it be permanent fragmentation.

The world does not need another bloc.

It needs better bridges between blocs.

It does not need institutions frozen in the realities of yesterday.

It needs institutions capable of responding to the realities of today.

And it does not need to choose between national interest and humanity.

It needs to recognise that, in an interconnected world, responsible national interest increasingly depends on shared human security.

Perhaps that is where Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam meets Humanity First.

Not as a slogan.

But as a proposition for the future.

A proposition that countries can cooperate without agreeing, compete without destroying, and remain connected without being aligned.

Because ultimately, the strength of an international order should not be measured only by the power it accumulates.

It should be measured by the human good it creates.