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When leaders of the BRICS countries gathered in New Delhi this week, the group was very different from the one India first hosted in 2012. What began as a four-country grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China has expanded to 11 members and 10 partner countries, bringing in major economies and energy producers from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Collectively, the expanded BRICS now represents almost half the world’s population, around 40 percent of global GDP and more than a quarter of global trade.
The setting could hardly…