Building the BRICS Braintrust: India & the Battle for Knowledge Leadership

Building the BRICS Braintrust is a strategic intelligence brief that examines a quieter but deeply consequential dimension of BRICS cooperation: the race to build a shared academic, research, and knowledge architecture for the Global South. As global influence increasingly flows from ideas, standards, and intellectual leadership—not just markets or militaries—India’s role in institutionalising BRICS knowledge platforms has become a decisive lever of long-term power.

This report analyses how initiatives such as the BRICS Network University, the BRICS Think Tank Council, and the proposed BRICS+ Universities Summit are transforming ad-hoc scholarly exchanges into structured, policy-relevant collaboration. It highlights India’s comparative advantages in higher education scale, demographic depth, and norm-setting capacity, while assessing constraints such as funding gaps, regulatory fragmentation, and uneven institutional capacity across member states. Through scenario-based evaluation, the brief outlines what success, stagnation, or symbolic cooperation would mean for BRICS’ global credibility.

Essential reading for policymakers, academics, diplomats, and strategic analysts, this digital product explains why knowledge diplomacy may determine whether BRICS evolves into a lasting force or remains an episodic coalition.

Follow Global Eye Intelligence to stay ahead of intellectual power shifts before academic institutions shape tomorrow’s global narratives. In geopolitics, those who frame ideas often shape outcomes.