With Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Brazil to attend the 17th BRICS Summit, the Congress on Sunday invoked the origins and evolution of the BRICS grouping and highlighted the role played by former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh in its development, particularly during India’s 2012 summit.
Congress general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, took to X (formerly Twitter), remarking, “After dropping by in Ghana, Trinidad & Tobago, and Argentina, the Super Premium Frequent Flier Prime Minister has reached Brazil. The Seventeenth BRICS Summit begins today in Rio de Janeiro.” He traced the conceptual roots of BRICS to 1998, when then Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov proposed a trilateral forum comprising Russia, India, and China (RIC), intended to promote a multipolar world at a time when the United States dominated global geopolitics.
Ramesh also referred to the influential 2001 report by Jim O’Neill and his Goldman Sachs research team titled "Building Better Global Economic BRICs", which identified Brazil, Russia, India, and China as the emerging economic powerhouses of the future. Ramesh noted that the report still holds relevance and shared a link to the original document.
The first concrete step toward forming BRIC came in July 2006 at the G8 Summit outreach in St. Petersburg, where the leaders of Russia, China, Brazil, and India endorsed the idea. The inaugural BRIC summit took place in June 2009 in Russia, with Dr. Manmohan Singh in attendance. South Africa joined the group in 2010, expanding the bloc to BRICS.
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Ramesh highlighted that India hosted its first BRICS Summit in March 2012 in New Delhi, where Dr. Manmohan Singh proposed the creation of a BRICS Development Bank. “Three years later, this was launched as the New Development Bank, headquartered in Shanghai, with eminent Indian banker KV Kamath as its first President,” Ramesh added. Since then, India has borrowed nearly USD 8 billion from the bank for a range of infrastructure projects, including urban transport, water supply, and renewable energy, he said.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Modi arrived in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday evening (local time) and was received with a ceremonial welcome at Galeao International Airport. His Brazil visit is part of a five-nation tour that also includes Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, and Namibia. This is the fourth leg of the tour. Following the BRICS Summit, Modi will head to Namibia on the final leg of his journey.
The 2024 BRICS Summit in Rio marks a significant expansion of the bloc, with five new members—Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—joining Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Congress’s remarks served to underline India’s historic role in shaping the bloc’s agenda and direction, particularly during the UPA era.
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