NEW DELHI — A notable divergence in strategic evaluation has surfaced within the Congress party regarding India’s participation in multilateral forums as New Delhi hosts the 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam.
Countering former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s public questioning of the “tangible benefits” generated by such international events, Congress MP and former diplomat Shashi Tharoor defended the summit, characterizing the gathering as clear evidence of India’s “diplomatic convening power” and central role in the Global South.
Divergent Analytical Approaches Within Opposition Ranks
The debate reflects two distinct approaches to evaluating India’s high-level multilateral diplomacy across platforms like BRICS, SCO, G20, and QUAD:
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P. Chidambaram (Transactional Assessment): Expressed skepticism over whether recent summits have yielded concrete returns, arguing that recent multilateral meetings have produced few measurable economic or strategic advantages for New Delhi.
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Shashi Tharoor (Strategic Influence Assessment): Highlighted the soft power and geopolitical leverage gained by chairing an expanded 11-member bloc representing over half the global population and 41% of world GDP. Tharoor emphasized that hosting a dozen heads of state provides vital diplomatic standing that carries intrinsic value beyond immediate transactional gains.
Structural Challenges Facing the Grouping
While asserting the strategic necessity of hosting the summit, Tharoor also outlined structural hurdles confronting Indian foreign policy within the expanded alliance:
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Consensus Hurdles: Referencing the May 2026 BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New Delhi—where divergent positions between member states such as Iran and the UAE over West Asian conflicts prevented a joint communique—Tharoor warned that forging common ground remains a key diplomatic challenge.
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Trade Asymmetries: Flagged persistent trade deficits, noting that while intra-BRICS trade continues to grow, Indian imports from member states have expanded at a faster pace than domestic exports.
The contrasting appraisals reflect an ongoing national conversation between measuring foreign policy success purely through immediate transactional dividends versus long-term geopolitical positioning and multilateral agenda-setting.
