India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said BRICS shouldn’t project itself as an alternative to global organizations, even as founding members like Russia and China try to expand the group to challenge the US-led global order.

Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute, says BRICS members share enough interests to continue to collaborate.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has presented himself as the leader of an international coalition of states at the BRICS summit in Kazan, a city of millions on the Volga River. In the official opening photo,

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and Chinese president Xi Jinping held their first formal meeting in five years after a violent border confrontation between the two countries threw bilateral relations into a tailspin.

What is the BRICS? How important is the grouping amid an increasingly tense world? What does an expanded BRICS mean for India? We explain.