India's Aspirations for Global Governance Through BRICS: Significance for South Asia (Chapter 3)

Abstract

India in the region of South Asia is the biggest country in terms of territory, economy, resources, and skill-based talents. It has also attracted major attention from the neighboring regions of Southeast Asia and is upheld in the larger Asian platform for different issues and challenges. India's presence is inevitable and mostly acclaimed in the major interregional and multilateral groups of emerging economies and developing countries such as the BRICS, the G20, the IBSA Dialogue Forum, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral, Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the East Asia Summit (EAS). India aims to enhance its presence and achieve major goals in global governance through groupings such as the BRICS especially, for the region of South and Southeast Asia. The chapter highlights the actions of groupings such as the BRICS that can be adopted for effective functioning of the groupings such as the SAARC in the region of South Asia. There is also a detailed analysis of why and how the grouping of BRICS initiates a new alternative discourse on global governance that also represents the concerns of the South Asian and South East Asian countries. Moreover, the chapter also points at the process of deeper interactions of India in multiple groupings such as the BRICS and the QUAD with the US and other members leading toward an ambivalent position in its foreign policy choices and actions toward global governance.