Congress Leaders Split Over BRICS Benefits Ahead of Summit

Senior Congress leaders have publicly diverged over the value of the BRICS grouping just days before India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has seized on the split to attack the opposition party. Former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said on Wednesday, in remarks to a news agency, that he did not believe the last two or three BRICS summits had produced tangible benefits or results. He questioned what India gains from its membership of several multilateral groupings, including BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the G20 and the Quad, saying he could not see concrete benefits from recent summits, though he acknowledged that earlier BRICS summits had delivered some tangible gains. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, speaking ahead of the summit, offered a markedly different assessment. He said the 11-member bloc provides an important platform for the Global South, representing a majority of the world's population and 41 percent of global GDP.