The timing and substance of India’s engagement with the BCIC are important for several reasons. Firstly, India’s industrial strategy has long wanted to balance self-reliance with global integration, exemplified by programmes like Make in India, production-linked incentives (PLI), and digitalisation drives aimed at strengthening competitiveness and export capacity. MSMEs are at the center of that vision: they account for a substantial share of GDP, millions of jobs, and a large fraction of manufactured exports.
Participation in BCIC will give Indian MSMEs exposure to international best practices and emerging technologies at a scale that is otherwise difficult to achieve through domestic programmes alone. Secondly, BCIC’s focus on Industry 4.0 including automation, artificial intelligence, data integration, and smart manufacturing, pays attention to a key bottleneck for many MSMEs in the global South, and that is the gap between digital potential and actual technological adoption. Thirdly , in a world where Western industrial blocs often shape norm-setting institutions, India’s engagement within BCIC under UNIDO’s umbrella reinforces an alternative multilateral architecture rooted in South-South cooperation.
BRICS nations , originally Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, now expanded to include several other emerging economies, represent over one-third of global GDP and a significant share of global population. Working through this framework thus allows emerging economies to align around shared priorities such as inclusive growth, sustainable industrialisation, and equitable technology access rather than purely competitive geopolitics. While the BCIC offers promise, its success will really depend on effective implementation at national and firm levels.
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India’s MSMEs have previously struggled with barriers ranging from limited access to finance and skill shortages to regulatory complexity and slow uptake of digital tools. Although the BCIC sets a collaborative platform, structural constraints like infrastructure gaps and uneven digital readiness have to be addressed in tandem if India’s smaller firms are to fully benefit. Comparisons with other emerging industrial players are instructive.
China’s rapid ascent as a manufacturing powerhouse was encouraged not just by state support, but by coordinated industrial parks, robust infrastructure, and export-oriented clusters. India’s industrial base, on the other hand, has been more dispersed, with policymakers now emphasising targeted ecosystems to replicate export-led growth. In this context, BCIC’s role as a network platform can help India and other BRICS members learn from each other’s strengths and weaknesses rather than compete on unequal terms.
To conclude, India’s accession to the BRICS Centre for Industrial Competencies is reflective of a broader intent to reshape global industrial cooperation through collective action, where emerging economies pool resources and knowledge to overcome shared developmental hurdles. For the global South, this is more than a strategic alignment , it is a tangible step towards industrial transformation that is inclusive, technology-driven, and equitable. Whether this translates into measurable improvements in productivity, export diversification, and MSME dynamism will mainly depend on how such multilateral commitments are translated into real-world capacity building and national policy coherence. As the world navigates shifting economic orders, platforms like the BCIC offer a vision of cooperation that amplifies the voice and agency of the global South, positioning industrial development not as a zero-sum game, but as a shared journey toward innovation, resilience, and sustainable growth.
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