The Nirvik Bureau, Bhubaneswar, 11 September 2026
At Delhi’s grand summit, India prepares to redesign the global economic order—just as soon as it finds a reliable supplier for the screwdriver.
Delhi is hosting BRICS, that prestigious gathering where nations meet to complain about the Western-led global order while discreetly checking whether their containers have cleared Chinese customs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will sit with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping beneath chandeliers, flags, flower arrangements and the familiar, uncomfortable presence of the elephant in the room: India would like to be a manufacturing power, but at present it is often best described as a magnificent marketplace with an occasional assembly line attached.
The elephant, reportedly, has already been issued a diplomatic pass.
Putin Gets Oil, India Gets a Spreadsheet
The India – Russia relationship has become a moving tribute to the principle of strategic autonomy: India autonomously buys enormous quantities of Russian oil, while Russia strategically wonders what else India can sell.
The trade figures have the charm of a badly balanced marriage. India imports about $64 billion from Russia, exports less than $5 billion, and then calls the resulting nearly $59-billion deficit a “relationship with immense untapped potential.”
Indeed, it is untapped because no one can find the tap.
India wants Russia to buy Indian manufactured goods. Russia, meanwhile, needs vehicles, machinery, electronics, industrial equipment and other minor luxuries usually associated with a functioning manufacturing base. China sells Russia roughly $103 billion worth of such products – cars, machines, electronics and the sort of things that do not emerge automatically from a PowerPoint titled Make in India: Vision 2047.
Indian negotiators may therefore offer Moscow an attractive package: Russian oil, Indian goodwill, a bilateral payment mechanism, and perhaps 40,000 commemorative mugs featuring the phrase “Civilisational Partnership.”
Xi Brings the Parts for India’s Self-Reliance
The meeting with Xi Jinping will be even more delicate. India wants to reduce dependence on Chinese imports, which is why Indian industry requires Chinese machinery, Chinese electronic components, Chinese chemicals, Chinese auto parts, Chinese pharmaceutical ingredients and, in certain cases, Chinese replacements for the Chinese parts that were imported incorrectly.
This is not dependence. This is “strategic supply-chain participation.”
India’s trade deficit with China has climbed to roughly $112 billion. But there is no cause for alarm. A deficit is merely an import-export gap, and a gap is merely an opportunity – particularly for China.
New Delhi may relax selected commercial restrictions on China, because Indian manufacturers need access to affordable and sophisticated inputs. The resulting policy slogan is expected to be: “Atmanirbhar Bharat: Powered by Imported Components.”
The government insists this is a temporary stage in India’s industrial rise. It has remained temporary for so long that it is now eligible for heritage status.
Diplomacy Cannot Manufacture a Gearbox
At the summit, leaders will discuss wars, global institutions, multipolarity, financial architecture and the urgent need to democratise the world economy. These are noble objectives. But at some point, somebody must manufacture the pumps, chips, machine tools, industrial sensors and gearboxes required for the democratic world economy to function.
That is the awkward limit of diplomatic theatre. A prime minister can persuade, charm, negotiate, inaugurate, hug, pose, announce, condemn and issue a joint statement in three languages. What he cannot do is personally produce a competitive industrial ecosystem between a bilateral photo-op and lunch.
No amount of geopolitical choreography can turn regulatory delays into supply chains, corruption into competitiveness, or an “Ease of Doing Business” certificate into a functioning logistics network.
Foreign policy can open doors. But it cannot send a shipment through them if the factory is waiting for a permit, the machine is awaiting a spare part, the investor is awaiting predictability and the exporter is awaiting the electricity bill to stop behaving like a geopolitical adversary.
The Real Summit Is Elsewhere
The real BRICS summit is not in Delhi’s conference halls. It is in industrial estates, ports, technical institutes, courtrooms, customs offices, municipal permissions desks and factories where a small manufacturer wonders whether the next reform will arrive before the next inspection.
India can ask Russia to buy more, China to invest more and the West to make room for a rising power. But the most persuasive diplomatic note is still a container leaving an Indian port filled with goods the world actually wants to buy.
