HCF or LCM: The limits of global groupings
India stands at the intersection of these groupings — a founding member of BRICS, a key player in the G20, and a participant in the dormant RIC. Each platform offers opportunities, but each also imposes constraints. India's success in delivering the 2023 G20 Declaration shows that skilled diplomacy can still produce results
International groupings often begin with grand ideas and geopolitical optimism, but their trajectories depend far more on political alignment and the willingness of member states to act. India's experience with three major platforms — RIC, BRICS, and the G20 — shows how ambition frequently collides with reality.
The Russia-India-China (RIC) concept was first proposed in 1998 by Russian statesman Yevgeny Primakov. It was meant to be a Eurasian triangle capable of balancing Western influence. Russia and India were long-standing partners; Russia and China were drawing closer. Yet for India, a friend's friend was not necessarily a friend. The India-China relationship, marked by border tensions, strategic mistrust, and competing regional visions, ensured that RIC never evolved beyond occasional meetings. It lacked institutional depth, produced no joint agenda, and never became a meaningful pillar of India's foreign policy. It remained a diplomatic idea rather than a functioning platform.
BRICS, by contrast, began as an economic concept. In 2001, Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill coined BRIC to describe four emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, and China, all amongst the top ten in terms of GDP, that were poised to reshape global growth. South Africa joined in 2010, turning BRIC into BRICS, sandwiching the RIC in betwixt, and giving the grouping global reach. For several years, BRICS served as a forum for coordination, issuing communiqués but achieving little beyond symbolism. That changed with the creation of the New Development Bank in 2014 and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement in 2015, signalling a desire to build alternative financial institutions, both of which were anathema to the USA.
The real transformation came with expansion. At the Johannesburg Summit in 2023, BRICS invited six new members. By 2026, the grouping had grown to eleven full members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Indonesia. In addition, BRICS created a Partner Country category, now comprising ten states —Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam — bringing total participation to twenty-one countries.
This expanded BRICS resembles less the clean, original acronym and more a kind of geopolitical bric-a-brac: a shelf crowded with countries of vastly different political systems, regional rivalries, economic capacities, and strategic compulsions. The collection is impressive in size but eclectic in character, united more by the desire for a platform than by a shared vision of what that platform should achieve.
Expansion has magnified internal contradictions. Iran and Saudi Arabia, regional rivals, now sit at the same table. China's economic dominance raises concerns about bloc imbalance. India, wary of BRICS becoming an overtly anti-Western platform, has adopted a cautious approach to further enlargement. The result is a grouping with enormous potential but limited cohesion — a forum where consensus is increasingly difficult to achieve.
The G20, meanwhile, has a different origin and purpose. Formed in September 1999 in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, it brought together major advanced and emerging economies to stabilise global finance. After its elevation to leaders' level in 2008, it became the premier forum for international economic cooperation. Today, the G20 comprises nineteen countries plus the European Union and the African Union. It accounts for the overwhelming majority of global GDP, trade, and emissions, and more than half the world's population.
Its membership overlaps heavily with BRICS. Only a handful of countries — Mexico, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States — are in the G20 but not in BRICS. Conversely, BRICS includes states such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Indonesia that are not part of the G20. This overlap raises a natural question: how different are the G20 and the expanded BRICS?
The answer lies in purpose and politics. The G20 is a crisis-management forum with broad global legitimacy, whereas BRICS is a political and economic coordination platform for the Global South, increasingly shaped by China's and India's competing visions. The G20 seeks stability; BRICS seeks structural reform. The G20 is diverse but institutionalised, whereas BRICS is cohesive in rhetoric but fragmented in interests.
What, then, are these groupings actually achieving? Their original objective, to drive global economic growth and reform governance structures, has been overshadowed by political agendas, divergent national interests, and geopolitical rivalries. Both BRICS and the G20 operate by consensus, which means the lowest common denominator often prevails. Amitabh Kant, India's G20 Sherpa, recounts in his book Scaling Mt G-20 how drafting a simple joint statement required endless negotiation over every word and comma. The New Delhi Declaration of 2023 was hailed as a diplomatic triumph precisely because consensus had become so difficult. The BRICS Summit, currently underway, faces similar challenges; its foreign ministers have struggled to produce joint statements on issues where member states are sharply divided.
The current geopolitical environment makes meaningful outcomes even harder. The world is grappling with the ongoing war in Ukraine, the escalating conflict involving Iran, and the never-ending cycle of violence in West Asia. These crises divide member states within both BRICS and the G20. Russia's war in Ukraine splits the G20. Iran's regional role complicates BRICS. China's strategic ambitions unsettle both. Expecting grand outcomes from multilateral forums in such a fractured world is unrealistic.
Instead of a Highest Common Formulation (HCF, to use a mathematical term), namely a visionary, guiding framework for global cooperation, what is more likely is what might be called a Lowest Common Memorandum (LCM), an anodyne statement that offends none, satisfies all, and achieves little, notwithstanding the galaxy of Presidents and Prime Ministers who have descended on New Delhi. This is not a failure of diplomacy but a reflection of geopolitical reality. When major powers are in conflict, multilateralism becomes risk-averse. When consensus is mandatory, ambition becomes optional.
India stands at the intersection of these groupings — a founding member of BRICS, a key player in the G20, and a participant in the dormant RIC. Each platform offers opportunities, but each also imposes constraints. India's success in delivering the 2023 G20 Declaration shows that skilled diplomacy can still produce results. Its cautious approach to BRICS expansion reflects strategic maturity, while its disengagement from RIC indicates realism. But the larger truth remains that global groupings are only as effective as the political will of their members. In a world marked by conflict, rivalry, and fragmentation, India must continue to push for meaningful cooperation — even if the mathematics of multilateralism increasingly favours the lowest common denominator over the highest common ideal.
The Russia-India-China (RIC) concept was first proposed in 1998 by Russian statesman Yevgeny Primakov. It was meant to be a Eurasian triangle capable of balancing Western influence. Russia and India were long-standing partners; Russia and China were drawing closer. Yet for India, a friend's friend was not necessarily a friend
General Manoj Naravane (Retd) is former Chief of the Army Staff; Views presented are personal.
