EVENTS

The trust deficit between India and China, both BRICS members, restrains policy space for convergences, and can instead lead to more divergences. Whether this bilateral mistrust renders the BRICS ineffective as a congregation or whether the mandate of BRICS goes beyond it is the question being addressed in this presentation. While the mandate for congregations such as BRICS is comprehensive, not bilateral, mistrust between two big economic powers can undoubtedly deter its ability to contribute meaningfully to the global governance architecture. The presentation critically delves upon these two strands to unravel this paradox. The need to understand how BRICS demonstrates a sustained momentum despite Sino-Indian bilateral mistrust explains its core mandate, its strength as the voice of the South, and its ability to address common challenges of development cooperation, global governance, and infrastructural financing with apparently minimal divergences. While most of these are issue-specific and are based on in-principle agreements, this does not necessarily imply that the existing bilateral trust deficit is an insignificant factor in BRICS. Between India and China, trust is not a peripheral issue but a rudimentary foundation, both for bilateral cooperation as well as for developing common positions. The more the mistrust, the more apparent will be the divergences. At the level of BRICS too, the bilateral trust deficit is leading to even larger divergences as evident in their geopolitical posturing, geo-economic dominance, and governance models.

Speaker

Faisal Ahmed is a Global Business Professor at FORE School of Management, New Delhi, and a scholar of international trade and geopolitics. He holds a Ph.D. in International Trade and an Executive Certification in Geopolitical Analysis from Switzerland. He has served as a consultant on projects supported by the ASEAN Secretariat, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, and the United Nations ESCWA, and also been a member of various Track 1.5 and Track II delegations on India-China relations. He is the author of India’s Geopolitical Gravity: The 21st Century Gamechanger (Springer Nature, 2025) and The Belt and Road Initiative: Geopolitical and Geoeconomic Aspects (Routledge, 2021). He has published four edited books and articles in leading newspapers, including The Korea Times, South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, The Times of India, The Hindu BusinessLine, The Economic Times, and The Financial Express.

Chair

Anuradha M. Chenoy, is Professor (retd) and former Dean, School of International Studies, JNU. Currently she is Adjunct Professor, School of International Affairs, Jindal Global University. Her books include: Russia, Institutions, Structures, Politics (Springer Palgrave: 2018), The Maoist and Other Armed Conflicts (Penguin, 2010); Human Security: Concept and Implications (Routledge, 2006) (Co-authored with Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh).

Please register here