NEW DELHI: Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Brazil for the 17th BRICS summit next month, India has stressed the pivotal importance of the expanded grouping of 10 countries in promoting scalable solutions for the Global South and called for accelerating the use of national currencies in intra-BRICS trade.
“BRICS has to get its act together and find solutions for the Global South. This requires commitment, a lot of hard work, and the ability to look deeply into these issues and into the future,” said Dammu Ravi, India’s BRICS sherpa and Secretary (Economic Relations) in India’s Ministry of External Affairs. Ravi underlined India’s growing stake in shaping BRICS as both a development platform and a pressure group for reforming global governance. “We are not just participants — we are contributors to the very direction BRICS takes,” he said. He emphasised that India’s successful development models—particularly in poverty alleviation, financial inclusion, and digital public infrastructure—should be viewed as templates for wider application across the Global South.
Ravi was speaking at a conference titled “BRICS in Rio: Shaping an Inclusive and Sustainable World Order,” held at the India International Centre in New Delhi on June 20. The conference was co-organised by the Embassy of Brazil in India and the Centre for Global India Insights (CGII), a leading think tank focused on global affairs.
Besides Ravi, Brazil’s Ambassador to India Kenneth Félix Haczynski da Nóbrega, Russia’s Ambassador to India Denis Alipov, Indonesia’s Ambassador Ina Hagniningtyas Krisnamurthi, Egypt’s Ambassador Kamel Zayed Kamel Galal, and FICCI Director General Jyoti Vij also spoke at the conference. The event, moderated by Manish Chand, CEO of CGII, focused on BRICS’s role in promoting sustainable solutions to challenges faced by the Global South in the context of the upcoming BRICS summit in Rio.
