In its capacity as chair of the BRICS, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is holding a policy planning dialogue session on Tuesday which will be attended by the representatives of all the member countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This is the first time that the MEA is hosting an official foreign policy related engagement in Patna, said Santosh Jha, Joint Secretary (Policy Planning & Research, Global Cyber Issues), MEA, here on Monday.
India assumed BRICS chairmanship in February this year and keeping in mind the strength of the forum and the value that its members bring to the table, Jha said, the themes picked up for BRICS is Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions.
“Our objective during India’s BRICS chairmanship is to further consolidate Intra-BRICS co-operation by adopting a five pronged approach: institution building to further deepen and sustain co-operation, implementation of the decision of previous summits at Fortaleza and Ufa, integrating synergies among the existing co-operation mechanism, innovation of new cooperation mechanisms and continuation of mutually agreed existing BRICS cooperation mechanism,” said Jha talking to media people.
The BRICS summit would be held in Goa on October 15-16 in which as part of external regional outreach India has invited BIMSTEC leaders which included Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal. Jha said BRICS represents the coming together of five major world economies that total 37 per cent of the world GDP, 17 per cent of world trade and 34 per cent of world population. “We are amongst the largest holders of foreign exchange reserves and have sustained better than world average growth rates over the recent economic crisis,” said Jha who worked in Indian missions in Moscow, New York and Colombo.
The respective foreign office delegations would be led by Michel Arslanian Neto, deputy head of policy planning of Brazil, Oleg Stepanov, head of policy planning of Russia, Wang Wenbin, acting DG policy planning of China and David Malcolmson, chief director regional organisations of South Africa. The Indian side will be represented by Jha, Bijay Selvaraj, Satwant Khanalia, both deputy secretaries in MEA and others. The heads of delegations are also likely to call on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and visit some tourist spots.
India is also trying to make BRICS people-centric by enhancing people-to-people contacts on priority. A series of events in this regard are proposed to be organised during India’s tenure. The events include under-17 football tournament, youth summit, young diplomats forum, young scientists conclave, film festival, smart cities workshop, local bodies conference, convention on tourism and wellness etc.
Jha said that the BRICS policy planning dialogue will provide an opportunity for exchanges on strategic assessments of international situation and the regional situation of each country and trends therein. “This dialogue will also seek to enhance sharing of best practices in foreign policy planning and assessment between the BRICS countries,” he added.