When India hosts the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, 2026, under the banner of “Humanity First”, the occasion will be draped in a familiar promise: that the bloc is building an alternative to the western-dominated global financial order. A new bank to rival the World Bank. A reserve fund to free countries from the International Monetary Fund. A path away from the dominance of the U.S. dollar. Seventeen years into the BRICS project, it is worth asking a blunt question: has any of this actually materialised?

The short answer is no; the reasons have less to do with intention than with structure. The BRICS countries, for all their rhetoric about reshaping the world, are deeply enmeshed in the very system that they claim to challenge. The institutions they built reflect that reality.