BRICS, the acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, is an economic bloc with a political and strategic vision of its own. Its three core members are Russia, India and China. Russia was the progenitor of BRICS. Vladimir Putin, then an unknown, took the reins in Moscow in January 2000, when Russia was in dire straits, its economy in a shambles, politically bewildered, socially crushed, militarily crippled. It was Russia’s Time of Trouble - a very Russian phrase drawn from the country’s momentous past - as a deep national eroded order, while external enemies prowled menacingly around its borders, preparing for the kill. Mr Putin took six months to wade through his state papers grasping the present, drawing up plans for the future. Russia’s international creditors were paid off in record time, and considered statecraft replaced the power vacuum. President Putin’s outreach in foreign policy began with India; a state visit to Delhi and an address to Parliament was the first step to bilateral summits and a ‘privileged strategic partnership’ – the seedbed of BRICS. Russia the dominant Power in the Eurasian landmass, India its fulcrum, with China, Russia’s foremost neighbour - as it is of India and South East Asia. China is the world’s second largest economy, with a matching military heft.
India and China are the world’s two most populous nations, and constitute two enormous markets. Russia, a military superpower, is among the world’s top ten economies as is India and Brazil. South Africa is the African continent’s second-largest economy, with Nigeria the first. The Cape empowers South Africa’s outreach to Latin and North America and, eastwards to the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Brazil is South America’s giant, its largest economy and its most populous state.
The European Union, NATO, with the United States as the driving force, have cast a disruptive shadow on global stability. Washington’s peremptory economic sanctions against targeted countries deemed threats to American interests, with the EU and NATO, in servile obedience is out kilter with age. Such sanctions are directed principally at Russia and, less stringently, at China as well; they reflect wilful disregard for national sovereignty. Arbitrary US regime change-trade wars, together with jihadi terrorism, are the most potent challenges to international peace. A glaring example is the brutal assault on the lawfully elected government of Evo Morales government in Bolivia, bearing all the hallmarks of a CIA-sponsored military coup.
The true significance of BRICS can be best understood on the wider unfolding canvas we see before us. The recent BRICS Summit in Brasilia stressed economic cooperation. A BRICS bank was set up several years ago as a lending facility for debtor Third World nations. That said, effective measures were required to surmount critical financial challenges emanating from the US. Thus, Russia, China and India and working on a payment model to finance and boost mutual trade and investment as an alternative to the US-controlled SWIFT [Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications] payment mechanism in a bid to ease trade and tackle the obstacles for countries facing US sanctions regimes.
Russia’s financial messaging system SPFS is to be linked with the Chinese cross-border interbank payment system CIPS. India, meanwhile, plans to link the Central Bank of Russia’s platform with a service currently under development. The new system is expected to work as a gateway when messages on payments are trans-coded in keeping with the desired requirements of a particular financial system.
The US sanctions waiver to India on oil imports from Iran has been withdrawn, the message received and fully understood in Delhi. Prioritising the creation of alternative financial mechanisms is clearly work in progress.
Indian payments for arms purchases from Russia were switched to euros, but the long-term solution would surely be transactions in national rupee-rouble currencies, the subject now of detailed discussions by experts.
Opening a path to closer cooperation with Brazil on trade and investment, Prime Minister Modi extended an invitation to President Bolsenaro to be Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations on 26 January 2020. The invitation was warmly accepted. Prime Minister Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping held talks on deepening Sino-trade and investment through mutually acceptable measures for easier market access.
In conclusion, President Putin invited Prime Minister Modi for the Victory Day celebrations in Moscow next year on May 9, the anniversary of Soviet Russia’s Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. The parade will, no doubt, display Russia’s military might as deterrence against similar aggression from the west.
Following his parley with the Russian leader, Mr Modi tweeted: ‘Had an excellent meeting with President Putin. We reviewed the full range of India-Russia relations. India and Russia are cooperating extensively in areas such as trade, security and culture. The people of our two countries will benefit from our close bilateral ties.’
President Putin, for his part, noted that bilateral trade had increased 17 per cent. He told Mr Modi, ‘This is our fourth meeting this year. I am so glad to have these high intensity contacts. We have been implementing major bilateral projects and strengthening technical cooperation.’ Long may this deepen.
Royal visit builds bridges
Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, the Queen’s eldest son and heir apparent to the Throne, has long had a soft spot for India, inherited, no doubt, from his great uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British India.
Prince Charles was on his tenth Indian tour, his first halt New Delhi, where he made a courtesy call on President Ram Nath Kovind at Rashtrapati Bhavan. A day later, he visited the city’s principal Sikh Gurdwara, where he participated with volunteers, serving the traditional daily meal to all comers irrespective of rank, class, caste, profession or faith in keeping with the social spirit and message of Sikhism down the ages, from its birth in the 15th century, to the present day. The Royal visitor was greeted by the Sikh high priests, who presented him with a kirpan and robe of honour.
Prince Charles’s next port of call was Bangaluru, where he caught up with his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and her party, who were in the city’s local holist medical centre and its residence, where meals are strictly vegetarian. The Royal couple have had a long and fruitful association with establishment and its head. The Prince has been an a conspicuous bridge builder between Britain and India.
Remembrance Day service in Calcutta
On 11 November 1918 the guns fell silent on the killing fields of France, Belgium and elsewhere. The holocaust of the First World War was over after four years of the grimmest struggle in the annals of modern Europe. European soldiers died in their thousands, but so did men from the colonial empires, most notably from the Indian subcontinent.
Remembrance Day has been a solemn anniversary to honour the fallen in battle. It was so in Calcutta, for a century and more the capital of British India. A service of remembrance was held in the city’s St John’s church, where representatives of many a local diocese, church dignitaries and leading city schools were present in force laying wreaths. Wreaths were laid also by representatives of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force; the Governor of West Bengal, the State police, Calcutta police, Britain’s Deputy High Commissioner and the Consul of the United States.
The Revd Pradeep Kumar Nanda conducted the service, quoting the Biblical words of Jesus Christ: ‘Let not your hearts be troubled: ye believe in God believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so I would have told you.’
In the memorable lines of the English poet Laurence Binyon, ‘They went with songs to the battle, they were young./Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow./ They were staunch to the end against the odds uncounted./They fell with their faces to the foe.’
The congregation chanted the next stanza:
‘They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old: /Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn./ At the going down of the sun in the morning/ we will remember them.’
There are scattered plaques across Calcutta, some in unsuspected sites, others on cemetery gravestones, names of the fallen in the Great War boldly inscribed on the marble. Rest in Peace.
