Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are a significant informal grouping of major emerging countries that decided to cooperate on political, economic and development issues two decades ago. Back in 2001, the acronym BRIC was coined by Goldman Sachs to describe four of these economies (excluding South Africa) as major emerging economies at the turn of the 21st century. They subsequently began formalising their cooperation in 2006 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York and held their first Summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 2009.South Africa joined in 2011, turning it into the BRICS Group. The group expanded again in 2024, when Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became full members. Indonesia joined as a full member in January 2025 making the BRICS an eleven-member grouping. It now has ten additional partners, agreed in 2005 and 2006 (Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam).The main reasons for the creation of the original BRIC(S)One of the main reasons for the creation of the original BRIC(S) was that global institutions created in the aftermath of World War II no longer adequately reflected the distribution of economic and political power in the world. The particular focus of the BRIC founders (presidents Lula of Brazil, Hu Jintao of China and Medvedev of the Russian Federation and prime ministers Manmohan Singh of India), was on the four institutions vital to global governance – the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).The 2009 Yekaterinburg Summit laid out a wide-ranging agenda, but central to the conception and creation of BRIC was “a fairer world order”, “a more diversified international monetary system” and a “more democratic and just multipolar world order”. The argument for the greater inclusion in global governance institutions and mechanisms of China, India and Brazil in 2006, was largely based on their population and economic size, building on the Goldman Sachs statement of 2001.I enthusiastically welcomed the Group’s creation since I had recently led a major United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) publication “Making Global Trade Work for People” (Earthscan 2003) raising similar issues to what the BRIC Group first raised in 2006 on the unfair global trade regime. UNDP has supported the group in many concrete ways since then and continues to do so.As UNDP’s senior adviser on Inclusive Globalisation between 2002-8, I worked on these issues, especially the global governance of trade, debt and development financing. The global trade regime has been in crisis since the breakdowns of two WTO Ministerial meeting in Seattle, USA (1999) and Cancun, Mexico (2003) and the lack of genuine progress in the Doha Development Round agreed at the ministerial meeting in Qatar (2001), all of which I attended.While there were other objectives set out even at the outset of BRIC creation, I believe that the recent 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, India on 12-13 September 2026 and the 140-point, 45-page BRICS New Delhi Declaration (12 September 2026) should be judged by whether the agreements provide any new value added in terms of proposed agreed joint action to advance strategies that address the original overarching global rationales that led to BRIC creation.My conclusion, sadly, is that neither the Summit nor the declaration pass this litmus test. The declaration appears to largely reiterate earlier statements which have been put on paper numerous times at many similar summits with respect to those three areas, most recently in Rio de Janeiro in 2025 during Brazil’s chairing of the BRICS by president Lula, the only remaining political leader left out of the original four visionaries.Sadly, president Lula was conspicuous by his absence from the Delhi summit. This was particularly unfortunate since Brazil, is now, arguably, under his leadership, the most credible member of the original quartet. If present, he may have been able to bring much needed historical perspective and focus on the vision of the original BRICS founders into both the Summit meetings and declaration.Little evidence of concrete joint actionWhile some argue that the value of repeating statements in declarations is that they can stay alive, my contention is that the real value added of subsequent declarations is if statements made in earlier declarations are built upon and translated into concrete joint action to operationalise them. There was little evidence of this in New Delhi in the three overarching areas.To long term observers and actors on these issues, there is also little new in the statements themselves other than a strong focus on criticising and calling out Trump 2.0 unilateral tariffs and trade aggression as illegal under international trade law and criticising unilateral economic and secondary sanctions (at the behest of Russia and Iran).These paragraphs, while welcome since the BRICS as a Group has now endorsed them, are also not entirely new, having been officially stated elsewhere either individually, bilaterally or in other global forums by China (unilateral tariffs), Russia and Iran (sanctions) and some other countries, including some from the Global North such as Canada.No joint or collective action-oriented agreements on any of these areas were included in the declaration (e.g. BRICS member agreement to not implement US sanctions imposed on Iran). Agreement on such joint action would have added new value but would, no doubt, not be looked upon kindly by president Trump. Hence, India, as Chair, clearly did not desire agreement on such joint action and other members did not press for it.To be fair, the 45-page BRICS New Delhi declaration covers a vast array of other important substantive areas, some of which like China’s offer of open access Artificial Intelligence (AI) are new in a BRICS Summit. Various other paragraphs cover issues ranging from health to climate change, critical minerals, Palestine, Gaza and even West Asia on which the Summit succeeded in getting a paragraph jointly agreed by Iran, UAE and Saudi Arabia at the highest political level which had evaded the BRICS foreign ministers when they met in May this year. While diplomatically useful, this may be of limited practical value in the context of the continuing war in the Middle East which has recently expanded to cover Yemen and the Red Sea.While continuing progress was also made on trade related cross-border payments interoperability in the local currencies of BRICS members, the idea of a collective BRICS non-dollar currency, as earlier hinted at by some original BRICS members, was clearly taken off the table, if it ever was on it. While president Trump will, no doubt, be happy with this outcome which India delivered during its chairship, many BRICS supporters will be disappointed since it does go to the heart of the grave global monetary imbalances that the original BRIC founding vision sought to address but has, so far, made little progress on.The declaration, importantly, also reiterated the current and future centrality of multilateralism, the UN Charter, and upholding international law, recognising the UN as the main current and future global governance body. While welcome, this can be regarded as hypocritical since some BRICS members, now largely an illiberal grouping itself, have been called out for violating the Charter and international human rights and humanitarian law numerous times, with president Putin having been designated a war criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for some of his actions in Ukraine. In fact, many BRICS members unashamedly violate some of what they have collectively agreed and called for in many other paragraphs of the New Delhi declaration as well.While overall, some of what is in the declaration, even though it is not central to either the original purpose or vision of the BRIC(S) is welcome, it begs the question of whether the Grouping is getting diverted from its core original purpose and objectives.The limitations of the broader BRICS groupThe limitations of the broader BRICS group were made clear by both the stalemate and notable omissions of key players in the West Asia and Ukraine crisis. Months were spent to get agreement on a brief West Asia focused paragraph, but neither the US nor Israel, whose illegal invasion of Iran had triggered the crisis were named or shamed, while Ukraine equally shockingly, if unsurprisingly, was not even mentioned in the final declaration, presumably because of an informal Russian “veto” which India acceded to well in advance of the Summit.The contradictions between BRICS’ members are also becoming more apparent, especially with its expansion but not only because of that. While this was most apparent this year on the West Asia crisis, it is true in many economic areas as well including strategic minerals where China’s interests may vary from those of India and other BRICS members. Also, China has consistently opposed India’s inclusion as a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, a key demand of India, so the agreed declaration, unsurprisingly, has vague language in this area.There also appears to be an identity crisis. Has the BRICS as it currently stands become a Grouping of the South, or does it still claim to be a group of emerging countries as originally envisioned or has that now become emerging and developing countries (EMDEs)? While the South-South rhetoric, focus and joint actions of the BRICS in the economic and development areas seems to be growing, with the New Delhi declaration being overwhelmingly focused on these areas, the Russian Federation was never part of the Global South, China is understandably not regarded by many countries as part of the Global South now, nor are relatively oil rich UAE and Saudi Arabia.Some of these countries were never part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) or the G77, the main existing South grouping, the decline of whose political influence in international fora contributed to the creation of the original five BRICS.Is the declaration saying anything different?A key question which needs to be asked after the Delhi Summit and declaration, is whether the BRICS as a separate grouping now provide a real substantive value added on the big geopolitical issues and injustices which were critical to its founding vision. The “cut and paste” or repetition of paragraphs from earlier declarations and forums in these areas indicates that little significant progress has been made on these overarching issues two decades after BRIC creation.Moreover, in terms of value added on the big geoeconomic issues like trade and Bretton Woods Institution (BWI) reform, is the declaration saying anything different from what they individually or collectively say in New York, Geneva or Washington DC or at the G20 of which the original five are all members?This question has taken on particular importance after the New Delhi Summit because it made clear, probably once and for all, that the BRICS will never confront the US or even the EU as a bloc. The actions agreed in the declaration seem to be in easier and less contentious South-South economic and development cooperation areas.The various omissions or commissions by the BRICS in its September 2026 New Delhi declaration, the now obvious and visible contradictions between its members and confusion about its identity reduce both the group’s credibility and effectiveness. While there is still value in having the BRICS as a South-South economic and development cooperation forum (notwithstanding that some of its core members are not from the Global South), this was neither its original primary purpose nor its core vision.Kamal Malhotra is Distinguished Visiting Professor, NALSAR University of Law, India.