What Kazakhstan’s BRICS Turn Means for India, Rest?

Dr. Ananya Mishra  |  ananya@TheNewsSite.in |  Almaty, Kazakhstan | 

The old concept of Eurasia is becoming inadequate as the 18th BRICS summit concludes in New Delhi. Economic power is dispersing, strategic alignments are becoming more fluid, and institutions once designed around a small number of major powers are being reworked to accommodate a broader Global South. BRICS Summit is taking place against precisely this transformation. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s presence at the summit is therefore significant beyond Kazakhstan’s status as a BRICS partner. It places Central Asia inside one of the most consequential conversations about the emerging international order, while giving India an opportunity to demonstrate that its strategic imagination reaches deep into the Eurasian heartland.

The scale of BRICS itself explains why this moment matters. The 11 BRICS members now represent 49.5% of the world’s population, 40% of global GDP and 26% of global trade, according to the Government of India. India’s 2026 chairship, under the theme “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”, comes at a moment when BRICS is evolving from an economic grouping into a broader platform for political coordination, development cooperation and Global South diplomacy. Its expanding membership and partner-country architecture are creating new diplomatic pathways for states that want a larger voice in an international system that is becoming increasingly multipolar.

Kazakhstan occupies an important position within this expanding architecture. It is not a BRICS member; it became a BRICS partner country on 1 January 2025. That distinction matters. Kazakhstan’s foreign policy has traditionally depended on maintaining strategic room for maneuver among competing centers of power. Partnership with BRICS gives Astana access to an influential political and economic platform while allowing it to preserve its multi-vector diplomacy and its relationships with Russia, China, Europe, the United States, India, and other major actors.

President Tokayev’s presence in New Delhi consequently carries considerable political meaning. His participation places Kazakhstan visibly within the wider BRICS conversation at a time when Central Asia is gaining greater strategic importance because of its location, natural resources, transport networks, and proximity to several major centers of power. On the sidelines of the summit, President Tokayev has held high-level meetings, including discussions with UAE Crown Prince Khaled bin Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy for South and Central Asia, Sergio Gor.

The BRICS summit is thus serving Kazakhstan as a platform for wider diplomatic engagement, while demonstrating India’s capacity to convene actors from different geopolitical and regional spaces.

For India, Kazakhstan represents a particularly valuable partner in this emerging Eurasian landscape. The relationship predates the current competition over connectivity and strategic influence. India established diplomatic relations with Kazakhstan in February 1992, shortly after the country became independent, and the relationship has since developed across political, economic, defense, education, culture, energy, and multilateral cooperation. The two countries have also worked together through institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the United Nations. This accumulated political trust provides an important foundation for the relationship at a time when both countries are seeking greater strategic autonomy.

Yet the economic relationship reveals a significant gap between political goodwill and commercial scale. Kazakhstan’s bilateral trade with India reached $315.4 million in the first half of 2026. Kazakhstan has identified approximately 95 commodity items that could generate an additional $313 million in exports to India. The sectors include metallurgy, chemicals, food products, construction materials, and mechanical engineering, while the two countries are exploring wider cooperation in critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, artificial intelligence, digitalization, and energy.

This gap is precisely where the idea of India-Kazakhstan branding becomes strategically interesting. Countries today compete for investment, technology, talent and influence through narratives as much as through conventional diplomacy. Kazakhstan possesses a powerful geographical proposition: it sits at the centre of Eurasia and is seeking to establish itself as a major logistics and trade hub connecting Europe and Asia. Thirteen international transport corridors cross its territory. President Tokayev has highlighted Kazakhstan’s strategic role in Eurasian connectivity, noting that the country accounts for about 85% of all land transit traffic from China to Europe. Kazakhstan has invested more than $35 billion in modernising its transport sector over the past 15 years, strengthening its position as a major transit and logistics hub between Asia and Europe.

India brings a different but complementary proposition. Its enormous consumer market, technology ecosystem, pharmaceutical capabilities, digital public infrastructure, services sector and expanding manufacturing base give it economic assets that can complement Kazakhstan’s geographical advantages. The strategic opportunity lies in connecting these two national identities: Kazakhstan as a Eurasian gateway and India as a major South Asian source of capital, technology, enterprise, and demand.

Such branding, if it is to have strategic value, must be built around tangible economic activity. “India in Central Asia” could signify Indian manufacturing in Kazakh special economic zones, pharmaceutical and healthcare partnerships, agricultural processing, digital technology cooperation, critical-mineral value chains, and greater movement of Indian goods through Kazakhstan towards Central Asian and European markets. Kazakhstan’s network of special economic zones provides an established institutional platform for attracting investment and encouraging industrial localization. The relationship can therefore move from the language of friendship towards the architecture of production, trade, and connectivity.

Connectivity may ultimately prove to be the most consequential dimension. India has sought stronger access to Central Asia, while Kazakhstan is developing its role in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, or Middle Corridor. Bringing these agendas closer could help create an alternative economic map of Eurasia, one in which Central Asia is viewed as a strategic partner in its own right and India is connected more directly to continental markets. The significance of this would extend beyond bilateral trade. It would give both countries a stronger position within the wider competition to shape Eurasian supply chains.

The real measure of the BRICS moment, therefore, will come after the summit. Diplomatic visibility has value, but it becomes strategic only when it produces investment, trade, infrastructure, technology partnerships and sustained institutional links. India can become a gateway to Central Asia, while Kazakhstan can become a gateway for India into the wider Eurasian economy. Their political relationship already possesses considerable depth. Their economic relationship has considerable room to grow. The opportunity now is to make the two converge.