A Y A N A N G S H A M A I T R A
Was it the dawn of winter, or simply a full-scale sunny day?
I took the shuttle that ferried me to New Delhi’s Bharat Mandapam, the venue of the 18th BRICS Summit, where the world’s attention had gathered.
The sky appeared unusually clean and clear. So did the road. Do the leaders look at the sky? I wondered if the world leaders would ever look at this sky.
Then the leaders started arriving, one by one—President Putin, President Xi Jinping and President Pezeshkian. We watched them arriving on giant screens in the media pavilion at Bharat Mandapam.
The New Delhi Declaration, adopted at the summit on September 12, put many of those interests into words: energy security, smart grids and energy storage; political and security cooperation; economic and financial cooperation; and cultural and people-to-people ties.
In the declaration, the BRICS announced 140 points covering these broad areas.
There was also an emphasis on expanding local-currency trade, strengthening cross-border payment systems and reducing dependence on the dollar. India proposed a BRICS invoice-discounting mechanism to ease trade finance for MSMEs.
But behind all these carefully drafted points, I kept looking for the people.
I observed them and wondered: How many people had worked to build this consensus? How do they become so organised, so composed, so accommodating?
The New Delhi Declaration accommodates roads, lines, minds, ideologies, ideas and, after all, interests. It identifies issues, matches them, assembles them, and tries to make them move in one direction.
From the BRICS summit, one moment struck me: Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim signing Kishore Kumar’s iconic Khwab Ho Tum Ya Koi Haqeeqat in the margin of the summit. Perhaps this is how leaders create their own kind of rizz—by stepping beyond protocol and etiquette and touching the lives of us, the commoners.
Suddenly, a link arrived from a friend. In China’s Global Times, unexpectedly, my own visual presence appeared.
I had spoken to some Chinese journalists over brunch.
Were they hoping or expecting to warm up ties? And they said yes.
Back at the press briefing on Saturday evening, there were discussions about the announcements. The New Development Bank, under BRICS, is expected to scale up capital, expand local-currency lending and open new avenues for green finance.
Yet, when I asked about some of the newer mechanisms announced at the summit, a top diplomat in India’s South Block could not specify the formation or functional process of structures such as the BRICS Incubator Network, the BRICS MSME Portal and the announced BRICS Startup Innovation Fund, intended to support cross-border startup growth and small-business partnerships.
The leaders also spoke of securing sea lanes and supply routes, resisting trade coercion and sustaining momentum for reforming international institutions.
The Kazakhs have been reaching out to me for quite some time. One of the writers at TheNewsSite.In, is based in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The partner country, Kazakhstan, is finding ways to diversify its economic and diplomatic interests, and BRICS may have many answers. The Astana Times interviewed me during the summit.
The coffee, meanwhile, was remarkably charming in the BRICS media pavilion. On the other side, President Xi Jinping couldn’t make it to the state dinner hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
President Xi Jinping and President Putin left.
The movement of leaders, cars and security details began to thin out.
New Delhi has given BRICS a declaration.
And, after all, it has also given it a clear sky.
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