The 18th BRICS Summit, hosted by India in New Delhi on September 12–13 2026 on the theme Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability, offered Bangladesh a rare confluence of diplomatic openings. As current chair of BIMSTEC, Prime Minister (PM) Tarique Rahman received an invitation to the outreach session as a standard practice for heads of regional organisations. India had also extended a separate bilateral invitation earlier in the year. Yet Dhaka has ruled out the PM’s participation, with officials emphasising that the invitation was to the BIMSTEC Chair rather than personally to the Bangladesh government, and that any first visit to India should be bilateral rather than multilateral. The result is a clear missed opportunity: A chance to begin mending strained ties with India, to engage directly with major global leaders, and to visibly align Bangladesh with the aspirations of the Global South at a pivotal moment in its development trajectory.
India–Bangladesh relations have been under strain since the political transition in Dhaka in 2024. The continued presence in India of former PM Sheikh Hasina, coupled with extradition demands from the new government, has complicated high-level engagement. In this context, the BRICS invitation was more than protocol. It provided a structured, multilateral setting in which Bangladesh’s leadership could interact with Indian counterparts without the full weight of a standalone bilateral visit. Sideline conversations, informal meetings, and joint appearances in outreach sessions often create space for quiet diplomacy that formal bilateral summits sometimes lack. By declining to attend, Bangladesh forgoes an immediate, low-pressure opportunity to signal openness to dialogue, rebuild channels of communication, and explore practical cooperation on shared interests including trade, connectivity, water resources, and border management while broader political differences persist. Prioritising the optics of a purely bilateral first visit is understandable as a matter of domestic messaging, yet it risks prolonging a freeze in engagement that benefits neither side. Neighbourhood realities do not wait for perfect political conditions; sustained absence from available platforms only hardens positions.
Beyond the bilateral dimension, the summit gathers an extraordinary concentration of global leadership. Confirmed or expected participants include Chinese President Xi Jinping (his first visit to India in years), Russian President Vladimir Putin, and leaders from South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, the UAE and other BRICS members and partners, alongside United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. For a country of Bangladesh’s size and strategic location, direct access to these leaders in one venue is uncommon. Outreach sessions and associated bilateral meetings allow smaller or non-member states to raise development priorities, seek investment and technology partnerships, and clarify positions on issues ranging from climate finance and supply-chain resilience to food and energy security. Bangladesh already maintains significant economic and infrastructural ties with several BRICS countries, notably India, China and Russia, and is a member of the New Development Bank. Attendance would have enabled its leadership to engage these partners simultaneously, advance specific project discussions, and demonstrate continuity in foreign policy despite domestic political change. Non-participation leaves those conversations to lower-level representatives or future bilateral channels that may take longer to materialise.
{{/usCountry}}Beyond the bilateral dimension, the summit gathers an extraordinary concentration of global leadership. Confirmed or expected participants include Chinese President Xi Jinping (his first visit to India in years), Russian President Vladimir Putin, and leaders from South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, the UAE and other BRICS members and partners, alongside United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. For a country of Bangladesh’s size and strategic location, direct access to these leaders in one venue is uncommon. Outreach sessions and associated bilateral meetings allow smaller or non-member states to raise development priorities, seek investment and technology partnerships, and clarify positions on issues ranging from climate finance and supply-chain resilience to food and energy security. Bangladesh already maintains significant economic and infrastructural ties with several BRICS countries, notably India, China and Russia, and is a member of the New Development Bank. Attendance would have enabled its leadership to engage these partners simultaneously, advance specific project discussions, and demonstrate continuity in foreign policy despite domestic political change. Non-participation leaves those conversations to lower-level representatives or future bilateral channels that may take longer to materialise.
{{/usCountry}}Equally significant is the symbolic and substantive opportunity to showcase solidarity with the Global South. BRICS has evolved into a prominent platform for emerging economies seeking a greater voice in global governance, reform of international financial institutions, and alternatives to traditional development models. Bangladesh stands at a critical juncture: it is preparing for graduation from Least Developed Country status (originally scheduled for late 2026, with deferral under consideration) and pursuing Vision 2041 goals of higher middle-income status. In this transition, preferential market access and concessional financing will gradually diminish, making diversified partnerships and collective bargaining more valuable. Participation in the outreach session would have allowed Bangladesh to position itself as an active contributor to Global South agendas—climate vulnerability, sustainable infrastructure, digital public goods, and inclusive growth—rather than remaining on the periphery. It would have reinforced the country’s long-standing identity as a proponent of South–South cooperation and multilateralism. Choosing absence instead projects hesitation precisely when visibility and proactive diplomacy could strengthen Bangladesh’s claim to a larger role in regional and global forums.
The costs of this decision are not merely symbolic. Bangladesh’s economy remains heavily dependent on exports, remittances and external investment. Engaging major partners through a high-profile multilateral event can accelerate concrete outcomes in trade facilitation, infrastructure financing and technology transfer. It also sends a signal of pragmatic foreign policy that balances neighbourhood sensitivities with wider strategic interests. By contrast, non-attendance risks being interpreted as prioritising political signalling and domestic narratives over developmental pragmatism.
None of this implies that Bangladesh must abandon its insistence on favourable bilateral conditions or its right to calibrate the pace of engagement with India. Sovereignty includes the freedom to choose platforms and timing. Yet diplomacy is cumulative. Opportunities for high-level interaction with multiple influential capitals do not recur frequently. The 18th BRICS Summit combined three valuable elements in one setting: A chance to ease bilateral friction with the host, face-to-face access to a broad spectrum of global leaders, and a public demonstration of alignment with the Global South’s collective aspirations. Bangladesh’s decision not to send its PM means these openings will pass without being fully utilised.
In the longer term, Dhaka can still pursue membership or partner status in expanded configurations of BRICS, deepen bilateral ties with individual members, and strengthen its role in BIMSTEC and other regional bodies. Those avenues remain open. The immediate cost, however, is the loss of a timely platform that could have advanced several objectives at once. At a moment when Bangladesh is navigating political transition, economic graduation pressures and a complex neighbourhood, pragmatic engagement with available multilateral opportunities would have served its interests more effectively than absence. The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi will proceed without Bangladesh’s top leadership; the missed chance to mend ties, meet global leaders and affirm Global South solidarity will be recorded as a self-imposed limitation rather than an external constraint.
(The views expressed are personal)
This article is authored by Pravesh Kumar Gupta, associate fellow, Vivekananda International Foundation, New Delhi.