On 5 July 2026 the Government of India announced two significant events under its BRICS Chairship for 2026: a BRICS Women Working Group (WWG) Meeting in Kochi, Kerala on 6-7 July, and a BRICS Heads of Anti-Drug Agencies Meeting in Guwahati, Assam on the same dates. Read together, the two meetings show how a modern plurilateral grouping works across very different domains — women-led development on one track and transnational narcotics enforcement on another — and they make BRICS one of the most exam-relevant International Relations topics of the year for CDS/OTA.
BRICS in 2026: the group you must be able to describe
BRICS began life as an acronym, not an organisation. The economist Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs coined "BRIC" in 2001 to describe four fast-growing emerging economies — Brazil, Russia, India, China. The grouping held its first formal summit in 2009 (Yekaterinburg, Russia), and South Africa joined in 2010, turning BRIC into BRICS.
The decisive change is recent. After the 2023 Johannesburg Summit, BRICS underwent its first major expansion:
- January 2024: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined as full members.
- January 2025: Indonesia became a full member.
As of 2026, BRICS is an 11-member bloc: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Its collective weight is the statistic examiners love:
- around 40% of global GDP,
- roughly 49.5% of the global population,
- about 26% of global trade.
A second tier of "Partner Countries" (including Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam) sits alongside the full members. India will chair BRICS for the fourth time in 2026 (after 2012, 2016 and 2021), under the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability." Understanding a bloc of this economic scale ties naturally into the international-trade and global-economy portion of the syllabus.
The Kochi meeting: the BRICS Women's Track
The Women Working Group Meeting in Kochi advances what India calls the BRICS Women Track, focused on four priority areas:
- Women in governance and leadership,
- Women's digital and financial inclusion,
- Women's entrepreneurship and skill development,
- Women's role in climate action, food security and nutrition.
Built on three virtual preparatory meetings held through 2026, the Kochi WWG is designed to feed into a higher-level BRICS Women Ministerial Meeting on 8-9 July 2026. The larger point for an aspirant is that "women-led development" (mahila-led vikas) has become a formal plank of India's multilateral diplomacy, echoing themes India pushed during its G20 Presidency (2023).
The Guwahati meeting: narcotics enforcement goes plurilateral
The Heads of Anti-Drug Agencies Meeting in Guwahati is hosted by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) under the Ministry of Home Affairs. Its purpose is to move BRICS drug-control cooperation from dialogue to structured, operational collaboration across three priority areas: combating synthetic drugs and precursor diversion, strengthening intelligence sharing and operational coordination, and capacity building.
The context is a fast-changing threat landscape: synthetic drugs, New Psychoactive Substances (NPS), darknet-enabled trafficking and cryptocurrency-based financial flows now cut across borders in ways older enforcement models cannot handle. India used the occasion to showcase its own Vision Document on Narcotics Control (2026-2029) and its "whole-of-government, network-centric" approach to a Drug-Free India / Nasha Mukt Bharat. This is a useful example of how internal security priorities are increasingly pursued through external, multilateral channels — a recurring theme in the IR and internal-security overlap.
Why two such different meetings matter
The pairing is the analytical gift here. BRICS is often reduced to "an economic counterweight to the West" or "the group behind the New Development Bank." These two meetings show its functional breadth — it is simultaneously a forum for social-development norms (the Women's Track) and hard security cooperation (anti-narcotics). For a balanced answer, you should also flag the challenges: an enlarged 11-member BRICS is more diverse and harder to build consensus in, with members like China and India holding very different strategic outlooks, and questions persist about "de-dollarisation," BRICS Pay and a common currency that the bloc has discussed but not resolved. Locating BRICS accurately within India's wider multi-alignment foreign policy — balancing BRICS with the Quad, the SCO and the G20 — is exactly the nuance examiners reward.
The de-dollarisation and BRICS Pay debate
No BRICS answer is complete without the currency question, which examiners increasingly probe. As the bloc has enlarged, members have discussed reducing dependence on the US dollar for trade settlement — sometimes loosely called "de-dollarisation." The concrete ideas on the table include settling more intra-BRICS trade in local currencies, building BRICS Pay (a decentralised cross-border payment messaging system as an alternative to SWIFT), and exploring interoperability of members' Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) — a theme India has actively pushed, given the RBI's own e-Rupee pilot.
India's position is deliberately careful. New Delhi supports efficient local-currency trade and reducing transaction friction, but has publicly clarified that it is not pursuing a common BRICS currency and is not "anti-dollar" — a stance that reflects India's broader strategic autonomy / multi-alignment doctrine. This nuance is exactly what a good answer should capture: BRICS is a platform for reform of the global financial order, not (for India) an anti-West alliance. That balance also explains why India stays equally invested in the Quad, the G20 and the IMF-World Bank system even while chairing BRICS.
Summit timeline you should memorise
- 2001 — Jim O'Neill coins "BRIC."
- 2009 — First BRIC summit, Yekaterinburg (Russia).
- 2010 — South Africa joins; BRIC becomes BRICS.
- 2014 — New Development Bank and Contingent Reserve Arrangement agreed (Fortaleza summit).
- 2024 — First expansion: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE.
- 2025 — Indonesia joins as a full member.
- 2026 — India's fourth Chairship; theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability."
Key institutions to remember
- New Development Bank (NDB) — the BRICS bank, headquartered in Shanghai, established 2014-15; first president was India's K.V. Kamath; current president is Brazil's Dilma Rousseff.
- Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) — a currency-swap safety net among members.
- India's chairship theme for 2026: "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability."
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. As of 2026, how many full members does BRICS have? (a) 5 (b) 9 (c) 11 (d) 15 → (c) BRICS has 11 full members in 2026 after the 2024-25 expansion (Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, UAE).
Q2. The BRICS Women Working Group Meeting under India's 2026 Chairship was held in: (a) New Delhi (b) Kochi (c) Guwahati (d) Mumbai → (b) The Women Working Group met in Kochi, Kerala on 6-7 July 2026; the Anti-Drug Agencies meeting was in Guwahati.
Q3. Which agency hosted the BRICS Heads of Anti-Drug Agencies Meeting in Guwahati? (a) Central Bureau of Investigation (b) Enforcement Directorate (c) Narcotics Control Bureau (d) National Investigation Agency → (c) The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, hosted the meeting.
Q4. The BRICS grouping in 2026 accounts for approximately what share of global population? (a) 25% (b) 33% (c) 49.5% (d) 70% → (c) BRICS represents about 49.5% of the world's population and roughly 40% of global GDP.
Q5. The New Development Bank (NDB), associated with BRICS, is headquartered in: (a) New Delhi (b) Shanghai (c) Moscow (d) Johannesburg → (b) The NDB is headquartered in Shanghai, China; its first president was India's K.V. Kamath.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
BRICS is among the most reliably tested IR topics for CDS/OTA. The dominant shape is a membership/facts MCQ — how many members, who the newest entrants are, the acronym's origin (Jim O'Neill, 2001), the first summit (2009), or the NDB's headquarters (Shanghai) and first president (K.V. Kamath). Expect the current-cycle factual pair: India's 2026 Chairship, its theme, and the host cities of specific meetings (Kochi/Guwahati). In descriptive and interview settings, the recurring prompt is "Is BRICS an effective counterweight / can it de-dollarise?" — where you balance the bloc's demographic and economic heft against its internal diversity and the India-China divergence. Do not invent exact past-paper numbers; instead show mastery of the static timeline plus the fresh 2026 developments. Revise BRICS alongside the Quad, SCO and G20 so you can place it within India's multi-alignment strategy.
Building your IR base for CDS/OTA 2026? Cavalier's CDS & OTA current-affairs hub tracks every summit and grouping in exam-ready form, and our officer-mentored CDS/SSB courses tie current affairs back to a solid static foundation. Learn the timeline once, and every new BRICS headline becomes an easy mark.
Written by Hitendra Deswal, Cavalier faculty (CDS General Studies & International Relations). Follow The Cavalier Academy on Facebook and YouTube.
Source: Ministry of WCD & Ministry of Home Affairs / PIB Delhi, releases on the BRICS Women Working Group (PRID 2281194) and BRICS Heads of Anti-Drug Agencies Meeting (PRID 2281212), 5 July 2026; BRICS membership and institutional facts cross-verified against public records.