The Hindu Gist - 12th September, 2026
1 . India’s Economic Bridges amid Rising Global Trade Barriers
A changing global trade order
- Rising trade barriers – Growing trade barriers and constrained sea trade routes are making global commerce more vulnerable.
- “Ugly forms” of competition – Economic rivalry increasingly involves military attacks, secondary sanctions and attempts to block transport corridors.
- Shift in economic power – Late-20th-century economic powers are being replaced by new engines of growth, signalling a structural shift.
- Technology as competitive edge – Western economies retain technological and scientific advantages and seek to regain their competitive edge.
- Economic security–national security nexus – Pezeshkian linked economic security with national and regional security, highlighting the geopolitical use of sanctions and technology.
India’s bridge-building approach
- Trade diversification – India has entered into ~40 trade agreements with ~40 countries since 2014 to reduce barriers and expand business opportunities.
- BRICS cooperation networks – India is developing cooperation in agriculture, health, skills and smart grids under its BRICS presidency.
- MSME integration – The BRICS Incubator Network, MSME Portal and Start-up Innovation Fund aim to connect enterprises with markets and finance.
- Freedom of navigation – India stresses secure sea lanes, open supply routes and safety of seafarers for uninterrupted global commerce.
BRICS and resilient economic cooperation
- Collective economic weight – BRICS represents 50% of global population, 40% of global GDP and >25% of global trade.
- Rising economic weight – BRICS economies have expanded significantly faster than the traditional economic powers, strengthening the case for deeper coordination.
- Local-currency trade – Greater trade in national currencies can reduce dependence on externally controlled financial channels.
- Beyond economic size – BRICS should move beyond its aggregate economic weight towards a network of trade, investment and joint financing.
- Operational cooperation – The priority is to convert “potential cooperation” into operational mechanisms with tangible economic outcomes.
- Financial–technological autonomy – No country should be able to disrupt another’s legitimate trade by monopolising financial instruments or technology.
2. BRICS Finance Ministers flag “unilateral imposition” of tariffs
At the second meeting of BRICS Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) under India’s chairship, held in Mumbai on September 9–10, members raised concerns over rising tariffs and non-tariff measures that distort trade.
- Unilateral tariffs: BRICS criticised the “unilateral imposition” of trade and finance-related measures, noting their inconsistency with WTO rules and disproportionate impact on Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDEs).
- Rules-based trade: FMCBG reaffirmed support for an open, transparent, inclusive, non-discriminatory and rules-based multilateral trading system, with the WTO at its core.
- Local-currency trade: BRICS Payments Task Force is exploring “pragmatic solutions” to facilitate greater cross-border payments in local currencies, while respecting national priorities.
- Payment interoperability: Discussions focus on interoperability of payment and messaging channels, alongside easier trade settlement and investment using BRICS local currencies.
- No one-size-fits-all: BRICS acknowledged that payment and monetary arrangements must reflect national priorities, ruling out a uniform model for all members.
- Growth Task Force: India established a BRICS Task Force on Growth and Development as a platform to address shared growth challenges of BRICS, emerging markets and developing economies.
- Three pillars: The Task Force will work around Resilience, Innovation and Cooperation, enabling countries to discuss growth models suited to their own national contexts.
- Broader financial reform: The statement also covered cooperation on reforming multilateral lending institutions, including the World Bank and IMF.
3. Goyal calls for local-currency trade among BRICS nations
Speaking at the inaugural BRICS Business Forum 2026, Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal called for deeper economic integration among BRICS members through linked payment systems, greater use of local currencies and more open markets. BRICS represents 50% of the global population, 40% of global GDP and nearly one-fourth of global trade, giving intra-BRICS cooperation significant economic potential.
- Local-currency trade: Goyal urged BRICS countries to link their payment systems and conduct more trade in local currencies, reducing friction in cross-border transactions and strengthening intra-BRICS economic ties.
- Open markets: BRICS members should open their markets to each other’s products, including raw materials and critical minerals, to expand trade opportunities and strengthen supply chains.
- Economic security: Jaishankar stressed that greater economic security should mean greater self-reliance while remaining interconnected — enabling countries to absorb external shocks without becoming isolated from global markets.
- Predictable trade environment: Stronger BRICS trade requires genuine market practices, predictable business environments, diversified commercial relationships and transparent trade and industry.
- Trade facilitation: Members should simplify regulatory procedures and enable faster clearance of consignments to reduce transaction costs and make cross-border trade more efficient.
- Growth and prosperity: Goyal highlighted BRICS cooperation as a means to generate jobs, wealth and prosperity, with India playing an important role as a pillar of intra-BRICS trade.
4. Finance Minister flags AI safety, systemic risks
Addressing the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2026 in Mumbai, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called for responsible AI adoption in the financial sector amid rapid advances in frontier AI, agentic AI and quantum computing.
- Frontier AI risk: Frontier AI laboratories are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence”, raising concerns over AI safety and systemic risks.
- Accountable AI: Financial systems should be “fast yet accountable, autonomous yet reversible” and innovative without diluting consumer trust.
- Human responsibility: AI may assist judgement, but responsibility must remain human and institutional, particularly where AI-driven decisions have significant consequences.
- AI transparency: Regulators, boards and senior management must know where AI is used, what decisions it influences, what data it relies upon and what harm can arise if it fails.
- Risk-based scrutiny: Higher-risk AI use cases require greater scrutiny before deployment and throughout their operational lifecycle; the greater the consequence, the stronger the need for review, explanation and appeal.
- Responsible adoption vs avoidance: AI adoption and AI avoidance are not the real alternatives. Institutions relying on legacy systems may become risk-less capable, less competitive and eventually fade out; the priority is well-managed adoption.
- Agentic AI & quantum computing: These emerging technologies can significantly improve efficiency, but their speed and autonomy can also amplify systemic risks, requiring stronger institutional safeguards.
- Tokenisation & agentic AI: Tokenisation has reduced intermediaries and enabled near-instantaneous asset transfers, while agentic AI is moving from recommendations to autonomous actions and compressing processes that earlier took days into seconds.
5 . India in talks to secure Australian, Chilean lithium blocks
As India steps up efforts to secure supplies of critical minerals, the Union Mines Ministry is negotiating with Australia and Chile for lithium blocks, while also seeking additional blocks in Argentina.
- Overseas mineral acquisition: India has limited domestic lithium reserves; after acquiring five blocks in Argentina, it is now seeking five more, while pursuing lithium opportunities in Australia and Chile.
- Private sector role: The government is encouraging Indian companies to enter overseas markets, undertake exploration and subsequently mine resources, with the extracted critical minerals supplied to India.
- E-waste as secondary source: India is promoting e-waste recycling as an important domestic source of critical minerals, reducing dependence on overseas supplies.
- Recycling capacity: 125 entities have registered under the government’s ₹1,500-crore e-waste recycling package, of which 58 have been cleared.
- Critical mineral recovery: The projects are expected to recover around 96 kilotonnes of critical minerals annually. The Mines Ministry is working with NITI Aayog to determine the location of incentives for the 58 eligible entities.
- Reducing import dependence: Around 25–30% of India’s critical-mineral needs could potentially be met through e-waste recycling, highlighting the importance of secondary sources alongside overseas mineral acquisition.
The Indian Express Gist - 12th September, 2026
1. AI Governance Architecture Must Include Its Largest Stakeholders
Why a new AI governance architecture?
- Cross-border risks: AI can amplify risks across financial systems, climate exposure and other sectors, making purely national or sector-specific regulation inadequate.
- Emerging-market vulnerability: Emerging markets are massive users of AI but remain vulnerable to technological, sovereign, financial and climate risks; hence, their perspectives must shape global rules.
- Institutional gap: Existing bodies such as the FSB and Basel Committee are important but primarily provide coordination/standards; AI requires an institution capable of research, regulation and global rule-setting.
International Institute for Regulatory Development (IIRD)
- Global apex body: The authors propose an International Institute for Regulatory Development (IIRD) as a global apex body for AI, finance and climate risk, building on the standards work initiated during India’s 2023 G20 Presidency.
- Three core functions: IIRD should undertake global research and early warning, build regulatory capacity and facilitate exchange of regulatory practices across countries.
- Knowledge exchange: Existing initiatives such as Project Agora and Project Dunbar show that regulators can jointly develop platforms and practices; IIRD can institutionalise such exchanges.
- Proportionate standards: Governance should reflect where growth and users are, with standards calibrated to different national and developmental contexts rather than imposing uniform rules.
- Complement, not replace: IIRD should complement existing institutions by producing shared research, early warnings and regulatory guidance, rather than creating another competing institutional layer.
Inclusive Global South-led governance
- Broader representation: IIRD should be an open institution, funded by public, private and multilateral sources, with membership open to the G20, OECD, multilateral development banks and FSB.
- Global South participation: The proposed framework should give emerging and advanced economies a meaningful role, ensuring that those most affected and most vulnerable are represented in rule-making.
- AI as common-law challenge: AI governance is being shaped by a handful of companies and governments; therefore, countries need to collectively design rules for a world “that does not yet exist.”
- India’s opportunity: India’s BRICS chairship provides an opportunity to draft an IIRD charter by the 2027 summit, potentially alongside a Global South-led AI governance framework.
2. AI can Kill Humanity in a decade? Get in line
Advanced AI could become an existential threat to humanity, with warnings that self-improving AI may potentially “kill us all” by the end of the decade. Despite recognising these dangers, companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI continue competing to develop increasingly powerful models for fear of being left behind. The concern is intensified by the fact that humanity has repeatedly pushed the planet towards catastrophe through war, nuclear weapons, overconsumption and climate change. This reflects the “banality of risk”—humans often normalise grave dangers even when they understand their consequences. The central message is that AI’s potential to destroy humanity must be taken seriously rather than dismissed as science fiction.
3. India’s BRICS Balancing Act
The Iran war, expanding Western sanctions and tariffs, and the weaponisation of financial systems have renewed the debate over India’s dependence on the Western economic order. BRICS is not a substitute for the West, but India must diversify its economic and strategic partnerships to protect its autonomy.
Risks of Western dependence
- Financial weaponisation: The removal of Iran and Russia from SWIFT highlights how financial networks can be used as instruments of geopolitical pressure.
- Tariff pressure: US tariffs and other trade restrictions demonstrate the vulnerability created by excessive dependence on Western markets and economic policies.
- Sanctions regime: India’s purchase of Russian oil during the Ukraine war and its cooperation with Iran have exposed it to the risk of secondary sanctions and economic coercion.
- Technology dependence: India remains dependent on Western countries for advanced technologies and pharmaceuticals. During COVID-19, India and South Africa sought a TRIPS waiver to improve access to vaccines and other life-saving medicines.
- Strategic vulnerability: Dependence on one dominant economic bloc can weaken India’s strategic autonomy, particularly when trade, finance, technology and supply chains become geopolitical tools.
Why the West remains important?
- Economic centrality: Western economies remain crucial for India’s exports, investments, technology and services-sector employment; BRICS cannot immediately replace these linkages.
- Trade and investment: Integration with Western economies has generated economic gains beyond goods trade, especially through the services sector and foreign investment.
- Alternative policies: Western economic measures such as the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) can affect Indian exports and require policy and technological adaptation.
- Chabahar dilemma: India’s investment in Chabahar Port is strategically important for connectivity with Afghanistan and Central Asia, but changing US sanctions and waiver policies create uncertainty.
BRICS as an additional economic pillar
- Growing economic weight: BRICS’ share of global GDP has increased substantially, from around 17% in 1995 to nearly 35% in 2024, making it an important platform for emerging economies.
- Trade diversification: Greater trade with BRICS countries can help India diversify markets and reduce geographical concentration of trade and critical-mineral supplies.
- Alternative finance: Institutions such as the New Development Bank (BRICS Bank) and other forms of development finance can provide additional sources of infrastructure and growth funding.
- Critical minerals: The concentration of critical minerals within the BRICS region offers opportunities to strengthen India’s resource security and resilient supply chains.
- Not an alternative to the West: BRICS has limitations, including internal political differences, China-related concerns, uneven economic capacities and the absence of a fully developed alternative to Western financial systems.
4 . China and the Rest: BRICS’ Widening Economic Gap
China’s growing economic dominance
- Unequal economic weight: China’s GDP has expanded far faster than that of the other BRICS members. By 2026, its economy was around $20.85 trillion, while India stood at about $4.15 trillion, followed by Brazil and Russia.
- China versus the rest: China’s economy is now more than twice the combined GDP of the other four original BRICS economies, highlighting the grouping’s internal economic imbalance.
- India’s position: India performed relatively well between 2006 and 2015 and became the second-largest economy within BRICS, but China’s growth has remained far ahead of the rest.
Uneven prosperity among citizens
- GDP versus living standards: A country’s overall economic size does not necessarily reflect the prosperity of its citizens; therefore, GDP per capita provides a more meaningful measure of average well-being.
- Changing rankings: In 2006, the average Russian was richer than the average Chinese citizen. By 2026, China had surpassed Brazil and South Africa in average income levels, though it still remained below the richest BRICS members in per-capita terms.
- India’s gap: India’s per-capita GDP remains considerably lower than that of China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa, showing that economic expansion has not translated into comparable average prosperity.
Implications for BRICS’ purpose
- Internal imbalance: BRICS was conceived as a collective platform for emerging economies, but China’s overwhelming economic weight has weakened the idea of a relatively balanced grouping.
- Diminishing collective influence: Instead of the combined economic strength of several comparable emerging economies, BRICS increasingly reflects China’s economic dominance alongside a much weaker group of partners.
- Question of effectiveness: The key concern is whether BRICS can effectively challenge the global economic order when its members possess such unequal economic capacities.
5 . What the Recent Trajectory of India–China Ties Means for the BRICS Summit
Xi Jinping’s visit to India after seven years comes amid attempts to stabilise bilateral relations, unresolved border-related mistrust and growing geopolitical tensions. It also highlights the challenges created by China’s growing dominance within BRICS.
- Border-related mistrust: India–China ties have been strained by confrontations at Depsang, Chumar, Doklam and eastern Ladakh, with the Galwan clash further damaging mutual confidence.
- Limited stabilisation: Military and diplomatic talks have enabled gradual disengagement and measures such as the resumption of direct flights, easing of visa restrictions and restarting of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra.
- Unresolved differences: Serious structural issues remain, including the trade deficit, restricted market access, taxation and customs barriers affecting Indian businesses in China.
- China’s growing might: Since the formation of BRICS, China’s economy has expanded much faster than those of other members, giving it disproportionate economic and strategic influence within the grouping.
- Strategic assertiveness: China’s economic rise has been accompanied by greater military and geopolitical ambitions, including in the South China Sea and along disputed borders.
- Different visions of BRICS: China and Russia tend to project BRICS as an anti-Western platform, while India sees it as a “non-Western” grouping, not necessarily opposed to the West.
- India’s balancing approach: India continues to need Western partners for capital, technology, trade, security cooperation and services-sector opportunities, while using BRICS for energy, development, trade diversification and institutional reform.
- Limits of expansion: The expansion of BRICS to 11 members has increased its global reach but also brought greater political and economic diversity, making consensus and coordinated action more difficult.
