Indian Democracy in 100 Notes · 🌏 Theme 9: Foreign policy & democracy
The Quad, BRICS, and G20: India's many tables
India is unusual in belonging, at the same time, to groups that are often seen as rivals. That is deliberate. Each forum does a different job, and India uses each for a different purpose, rather than treating membership as loyalty to a single camp.
The Quad — the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue of Australia, India, Japan and the United States, revived in 2017 — focuses on the Indo-Pacific, maritime security, technology, supply chains and disaster response. India has resisted turning it into a formal military alliance, according to analysts of its position, and presents it as a partnership for a free and open Indo-Pacific. Its critics, including China, describe it as an anti-China grouping; Quad members reject that description and point to its work on vaccines, infrastructure and maritime awareness.
BRICS began as a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China, with South Africa joining in 2010. It expanded in 2024 to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, with Indonesia joining in January 2025, and a partner-country framework created at the 2024 Kazan summit, with the first partner countries joining in January 2025. India chaired BRICS in 2012, 2016 and 2021, and again in 2026, with a theme of building resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability. BRICS is a platform for reform of global economic governance, for the New Development Bank, and for Global South coordination. It is also a forum where India sits alongside China and Russia, whose positions on issues such as Ukraine differ from India's Western partners — a tension India manages rather than resolves.
The G20 is broader still: 19 countries plus the European Union and, since India's presidency, the African Union as a permanent member. India held the G20 presidency from December 2022 to November 2023, and the New Delhi Leaders' Declaration was adopted by consensus. The G20 is useful for students because it shows India as a rule-shaper, not only a rule-taker: it can set an agenda on debt, digital public infrastructure and climate finance, even when members disagree on security issues.
Together, the three tables illustrate multi-alignment in action. The risk is overload and contradiction; the benefit, supporters argue, is that India is present wherever decisions affecting it are made.
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Key takeaways
- The Quad is Indo-Pacific and security-oriented; BRICS is Global South and economic-governance oriented; the G20 is the broadest economic forum.
- India uses all three without joining a formal alliance, preserving flexibility.
- Simultaneous membership creates tensions that India manages, for example by separating security cooperation from economic reform agendas.
Why it matters for civil studies: Questions on groupings reward precise distinctions — members, purpose and limits — rather than treating Quad, BRICS and G20 as interchangeable.
Discussion question: Is India's presence in both the Quad and BRICS a sign of strength, or does it weaken India's credibility with both sides?
Fact-checked copy, 1 November 2026. Disputed claims are attributed in the text; moving topics should be re-checked at the time of reading.