New Delhi: India Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in Brazil on Wednesday and Thursday for the 11th BRICS summit during which New Delhi's focus will be on the issue of multilateralism and counter-terrorism.
Ahead of the visit, Secretary Economic Relations T S Tirumurti said, "Prime Minister has articulated his vision for reformed multilateralism and has underlined the importance of strengthening and reforming the multilateral system itself. He has specifically underlined that when we call for multilateralism, we should not call to reinforce the status-quo of multilateralism but seek to reform multilateralism itself since this is what BRICS had originally set out to do"
Cooperation on the counter-terror has been another key focus of New Delhi, with Secretary ER Tirumurti saying, India has "worked closely within BRICS to not only take a strong stand against terrorism but also work to bring about focused consultations on specific aspects related to terrorism."
A joint working grouping has been constituted by BRICS with 5 focus areas--terrorist financing, countering radicalization, issue of foreign terrorist fighters, capacity-building and use of the Internet for terrorist purposes. India will be chairing the subgroup on use of the internet for terrorist purposes.
In fact, during the BRICS National Security Advisors meet in Brazil, NSA Ajit Doval had put the proposal to host a BRICS workshop on digital forensics in India. Under Brazil's presidency, first BRICS seminar on Strategies for Countering Terrorism took place.
PM is also expected to meet his Russian, Brazilian and Chinese counterpart. PM last met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok, Chinese President Xi Jinping in Tamil Nadu for the second India-China informal summit and Brazilian President Bolsonaro on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Osaka Japan.
Four key outcomes of the summit include MoU between trade and investment promotion agencies of BRICS, the launch of BRICS women business alliance, iBRICS--Innovation BRICS network which will include a network of research institutes like science parks, incubators, accelerators and BRICS institute of the future network.
