Editor's note: Decision Makers is a global platform for decision makers to share their insights on events shaping today's world. Vikram Doraiswami is Ambassador of India to the People's Republic of China. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

New Delhi readies itself to host its fourth Summit of the BRICS group – the 18th edition overall – on September 12-13. This year's theme is a topical, relevant, and pithy acronym: "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability." This is not only the essence of BRICS, but it also draws on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of "Humanity First," reflecting a deeply people-centric approach to this increasingly consequential platform for the emerging and developing world.

A grouping transformed

BRICS today is a far larger family than the one founded by Brazil, Russia, India and China nearly two decades ago. Today, the group includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, with a further 10 Partner Countries. Together, the group is a voice for roughly half of humanity, around 40% of global GDP, and a quarter of world trade. It is precisely this scale that has shaped India's approach to its chairship: to consolidate the gains of previous chairships while ensuring the smooth integration of an expanded membership, and to translate the group's shared priorities into practical, outcome-oriented, and enduring cooperation.

These overarching goals have been pursued through four thematic pillars. Under the first, “resilience," our emphasis is squarely on health, agriculture, food security, energy and disaster risk reduction, and supply chains that can withstand shocks. Under the second, "innovation," we have prioritized startups, MSMEs, entrepreneurship, science and technology, Digital Public Infrastructure, and artificial intelligence. These are areas where each of us in the Group has much to offer partner economies. Under "cooperation," our focus has been on strengthening multilateralism and reforming global governance institutions, a long-standing and shared priority across BRICS. And under "sustainability," we have advanced cooperation on clean and renewable energy, climate action, nature-based solutions, and sustainable consumption. Each of these is an area of activity that is both relevant for our times and crucial for the future of humankind and our planet.

A whole-of-nation effort

Our approach to an inclusive BRICS is not just limited to thematic content: It is represented on the ground through an "all-of-India" approach to hosting the nearly 400 meetings that constituted India's BRICS year. And so these meetings and events enabled our BRICS partners to sample the diversity of India, with meetings hosted in over 30 cities across India.

This has been possible because of a "whole-of-nation" approach, a model we refined during India's G20 Presidency, bringing together central ministries, state governments, industry, academia, and civil society, with the Ministry of External Affairs providing end-to-end coordination. Ministerial meetings across the security, economic, financial and people-to-people tracks have produced concrete and commendable outcomes. These deliverables include initiatives like BRICS Network on Digital Agriculture, a Digital Centre of Excellence for Smart Grids and Energy Storage, BRICS Guidelines for Disaster Management Early Warning Data Integration, to name just a few. Each of these, in its own way, speaks to the practical, outcome-oriented cooperation this chairship has sought to build.

Why India-China cooperation matters to BRICS

For all this institutional progress, what ultimately matters is what BRICS delivers for its people. In this respect, the India-China bilateral relationship, and the scope it offers for cooperation, carries particular value. As the grouping's largest economies and most populous members, we jointly bring considerable demographic and economic weight to the group.

A stable, predictable and cooperative relationship between India and China is therefore not only in the interest of our own 2.8 billion people, but is also a significant factor for the credibility and effectiveness of BRICS as an action-oriented platform for emerging economies.

There is reason for confidence here. Over the past year, India and China have maintained sustained engagement at the working level, complemented by high-level exchanges that have helped build trust and understanding between our two sides. This has translated into genuine cooperation on the ground: Our two countries have worked together constructively across several chairship tracks, from trade and finance to health, disaster management and culture, demonstrating that pragmatic, results-oriented cooperation is not just possible, but already well underway. China's active and constructive participation across BRICS events throughout the year has been particularly welcome, and reflects a shared commitment to the success of India's chairship.

Looking ahead to New Delhi

The benefits of this cooperation extend well beyond the two of us. It strengthens BRICS's ability to speak credibly on behalf of emerging economies. This means working toward fairer trade, equitable representation in multilateral institutions, and access to the resources and technology that can support the development of our countries and peoples, to name a few. It also means engaging on issues like climate cooperation that carry a wider impact for the whole of mankind.

And it sends a wider signal of stability at a time of considerable global uncertainty: That two of the world's largest and most consequential economies can find common cause in service of a shared vision for a more balanced and inclusive global order. That, in itself, is no small achievement.

Last year, at the SCO Summit held in Tianjin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Modi agreed that India and China are development partners, each offering the other significant prospects for growth. That same spirit of partnership can guide our approach within BRICS, where deeper trust between our two countries strengthens the grouping as a whole.

Guided by mutual respect, mutual sensitivity and mutual interest, and by ensuring that differences, which are natural between nations, never become disputes, India and China can help BRICS remain what it was always meant to be: An inclusive, action-oriented platform that is responsive to the priorities of emerging and developing economies, ready to meet the challenges of a changing world.

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