By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
NEW DELHI — Roads are blocked. Residents in some neighborhoods have been evicted or restricted from moving freely. That is the visible cost, this week, of India's turn hosting the BRICS summit, and it has sparked real anger in the capital even before the formal talks are done.
The larger question hovering over the gathering is less about traffic and more about ambition: is BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and the newer members added since — actually challenging a Western-dominated world order, or performing that challenge for domestic audiences?
Some analysts argue the bloc doesn't need to replace Western institutions outright to matter. It only needs to make Western dominance harder to exercise cleanly — offering alternative financing, alternative diplomatic cover, alternative trade routes. That's a lower bar than "replacing the dollar" or "replacing NATO," and it may be a more realistic one given how differently Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi and Brasília define their own interests.
What's not in dispute is the optics problem at home: a summit meant to project confidence and unity is, on the ground in Delhi, producing the kind of disruption — closed streets, displaced residents — that governments elsewhere get criticized for when hosting any big international event.
Whether BRICS emerges from this summit with sharper teeth or just another joint communiqué remains to be seen. The gap between the bloc's rhetoric and its coordination has been a recurring story for years; this week in Delhi hasn't closed it yet.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE –
— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera.
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