The BRICS alliance, initially formed in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has experienced a transformative expansion in 2024. The BRICS grouping collectively occupies considerable economic power in the globe. The expansion of BRICS membership has further boosted its influence. The group represents a significant portion of the world’s population, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), global trade, and energy production. In 2023, Brazil’s President called on the BRICS nations to create a common currency for trade and investment between each other, as a means of reducing their dependability on vulnerable American dollar exchange due to rate fluctuations. 

Officials and economists have pointed out the difficulties involved in such a project, given the economic, political, and geographic discrepancies between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Brazil’s president doesn’t believe nations that don’t use the dollar should be forced to trade in the currency, and he has also backed for a common currency in the Mercosur block of South American countries. The Southern Common Market, commonly known by Spanish abbreviation Mercosur, and Portuguese Mercosur, is a South American trade bloc established by the Treaty of Asunción in 1991 and Protocol of Ouro Preto in 1994. Its full members are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Right now, it’s an assumption that BRICS currency will increase payment options and reduce the vulnerabilities, of currency fluctuation.

What other BRICS leaders think? South African officials said a BRICS currency was not there on their agenda. Building a BRICS currency would be a “tough political project”, South African central bank governor announced in July 2023. He said that for getting BRICS currency they will need a banking union, a fiscal union, to some extent they will need macroeconomic merging of the BRICS nations. A lot of disciplined mechanism will be required for the countries that fall out of line with it. Most importantly, they will need a common central bank, in which country could it be located? Trade imbalances cannot be ignored. All BRICS member countries have China as their main trading partner and little trade with each other.

The potential benefits of a BRICS currency include reducing dependence on the US dollar and increasing economic cooperation among member countries. The potential benefits of a BRICS currency include a dominance in international trade and a preference from 58% of countries.

BRICS leaders have said they want to use their national currencies more instead of the dollar, which strengthened sharply last year as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and Russia invaded Ukraine, making dollar debt and many imports more expensive. Russia’s sanctions-imposed expulsion from global financial systems last year also fuelled speculation that non-western allies would shift away from the dollar.

Last year’s BRICS summit was a tricky assignment for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who aimed to tackle several thorny issues: balancing India’s ties with Russia and the West, managing BRICS expansion, and addressing border tensions with China. Modi tackled these issues plus some more upcoming bilateral trade problems gracefully.  

India has a strong voice in the BRICS and the UN, India spoke out against policies or actions that may harm the interests of any member. For example, India turned down China’s request to allow Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Mexico to join the BRICS.

Coming back to the issue of BRICS currency: each of the BRICS countries supports the currency initiative for different reasons. Russia and China are at the forefront of the de-dollarisation move for their political interests. Russia is trying to avoid US sanctions by challenging the dollar-dominated financial system, while China is promoting the Renminbi (official currency of the People’s Republic of China) as an alternative. Since more than 17 percent of its reserves are in Renminbi, Russia has a greater preference for transacting in Renminbi. On the other hand, India, South Africa, and Brazil have their own pragmatic reasons for supporting the move. Reduced dollar dominance in international transactions will make it easier for these nations facing a dollar crunch to repay their debts owed to international organisations. A 2019 study by Global Business Review compared the regime-switching behaviour of the real exchange rates of the five BRICS nations before and after the group’s formation. It concluded that the inclusion of a stronger policy interaction in the region, especially in monetary management, shows the chance of a strong currency union amongst BRICS members.

From 1^st Jan 2024, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, and Egypt have announced to join BRICKS block. The expansion of BRICS will diminish South Africa’s significance even further because the two African states joining, Egypt and Ethiopia, are both more populous than South Africa and are experiencing higher rates of economic growth, though in much smaller economies.

More than 40 countries have expressed interest in joining, the question of whether BRICS would admit new members was finally answered during a recent group’s summit. Despite pre-summit reports of division over the potential expansion, leaders from the five-nation bloc announced that Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would join the group starting in 2024. Argentina was invited to join but declined the invitation.

With the addition of these six countries, BRICS now represents 42 percent of the world’s population and 36 percent of global GDP. The primarily economic bloc was originally created as an alternative to the U.S.-led international order, with the goal of offering growing countries in the Global South a to counterbalance the Western institutions.

Conclusion

The potential impact of a new BRICS currency on the US dollar remains uncertain, experts are debating its potential to challenge the dollar’s dominance. However, if a new BRICS currency was to stabilize against the dollar, it could weaken the power of US sanctions, leading to a further decline in the dollar’s value.

The consumer behavior analysts have noted through many studies that ‘Country of Origin’ has become a significant phenomenon in today’s marketing practices. The words ‘Made’ and ‘In’ conveys the strength of the product.  The label ‘made’ on the packing label of the product refers to the manufacturing aspect of the origin of a product. It is often related to legal certifications, the technologies involved ingredients and techniques as well as work ethics and safety standards. And, ‘In’ refers to the origin and the geographical dimension of origin such as the location of the manufacturing process and the source of ingredients. ‘Made In’ therefore suggests information and associations that are both tangible and intangible. The ‘Made in’ tag helps consumers to make rational and emotional decision both.

In its 2005 “Year of Ideas” issue, The New York Times Magazine listed nation branding among the year’s most notable ideas. The way a country is perceived can make a significant difference to the success of its trade, business, tourism efforts, as well as its diplomatic and cultural relations with other nations. Simon Anholt coined the term ‘nation branding’ in 1996 and since then he has been working with governments to help them plan the policies, strategies, investments and advance which lead their country towards an improved profile and reputation. America has become the largest and most powerful brand in the globe; it virtually shapes the world in almost all dimensions such as national governance, policies, exports, people, tourism, economic and social status etc. In the fast growing global village nation’s branding is considered as big as federal mega-projects. Steve Silver and Sam Hill, both marketing experts define nation branding as most complex (brand) positioning problem; how can we brand a nation? A nation is as big as a Meta brand inclusive of numerous mega brands. There are so many mega activities of in a nation such as political governance, commerce, education, human resource development, environment, foreign affairs, infrastructure, environment, tourism, culture and heritage and most importantly the national character. The study of national character refers to anthropological studies after World War II.

The Japanese are known as law abiding people; the Americans are known for their grit for freedom – freedom of speech, freedom to pursue their own interests, freedom from bullying, freedom of religion, freedom of movement within the country, freedom to associate with whomever they please. The Chinese are known for their orientalism; the French are known as arty.

The country of origin (COO) specifically matter to the customers because every country has its reputation and the association between the product and the country’s expertise matters while buying products. For example Italy is known for designs, North Caroline for furniture, France for fashion and wine, the USA for entertainment, India for spices, Germany is famous for cars. Today’s consumer understands legal and safety issues sharply. Consumers today look at the ‘made in’ label with many perspectives. The ‘made in’ dependent on a combination of many factors – from heritage, to design and physical manufacturing, skilled labour, infrastructure, market intermediaries etc. Hence manufacturers can leverage a lot on the country of origin as one of their competitive advantage. A company needs to be physically present in the country; the design and patents need to have emerged from talent in the country, or the brand needs to have factories or parts of the production process in the origin nation. In the past, when it was  enough to ‘borrow’ associations from a country for pure marketing purposes, today consumers not ready to accept country of origin as a choice driver unless it is bona fide.

Successful brands contribute to nation branding. Of the world’s 500 largest stock-market-listed companies measured by revenue in 2014, among the Fortune 500 companies 28 are headquartered in Germany. Well-known global brands include Mercedes Benz, BMW, SAP, Volkswagen, Audi, Siemens, Allianz, Adidas, Porsche and DHL. Thus, famous brands strengthen branding of a country. Similarly, brands across every category, like Apple, Cadillac, Clinique, Coca-Cola, Ford, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Ralph Lauren, Starbucks and M&M’s have made the USA a strong nation brand. These corporate have made Germany and America leading nation brands.

The concept of branding is viewed as ‘cultural diplomacy’ of nations. It is a somewhat new way of looking at a nation, but every nation is already a brand. Every nation is perceived in the minds of people living differently in nooks and corners of the world. Some countries are known for good things, some for bad, and others have mixed insights. Based on the different perceptions, nations in the world interact and do business with each other, either contributing to its development or encumbering it. For example Africa is associated with civil war, Iraq with suicide bombings, Pakistan for terror bombing, India for scam and Cuba with Fidel Castro’s dictatorship (though he is dead). On the other hand, countries such as the US, Canada, Germany or France, are perceived positively for decades for their sound political and economic development. Nation branding is based on the underlying hypothesis that every nation can make a good or bad brand depending on its efforts. The important thing to realize about branding a nation is that one of its ingredients is the escalating value of something that is found already within that nation.

Consumers in developing countries like India, China, and Brazil still tend to prefer brands that come from other countries. Global supply, manufacture and export of goods began to accelerate in response for lower prices and greater choice of goods. Companies became international or multinational and the rise of an affluent middle class in the USA, Europe, India, China and UAE demand more sophisticated marketing. Due to rise of consumerism, categories of goods and services became more sharply defined. And, most brands started crossing the borders of their origin. With all the great business strategies, advertising, marketing and intelligent supply chain strategies even today in the 21^st century for most of the brands, their place of origin and heritage continues to be a key part of their appeal and differentiation. Their name, identity, design and symbolism of logos or trademarks become synonymous with their country or place of origin.

We should realize the fact that Brand building in emerging markets is a difficult task. As the rapid growth in an emerging market gives millions of consumers new spending power, they eye for and are encouraged by their counterpart in developed countries to buy established brands. Marketing efforts in developing countries is very multifarious.

In 2003, when Mahindra & Mahindra launched a smartly designed sport-utility vehicle called the Scorpio, CNBC India, BBC World’s ‘Wheels’ program, and others chose the vehicle for the

‘Car of the Year’ awards in the SUV category. That was not a small achievement: The made-in-India automobile won top honors ahead of global best sellers such as the Mercedes-Benz-E-Class and Toyota Camry sedans. To M&M, which manufactures tractors in several countries as well as vehicles targeted at India’s semi-urban and rural markets, the awards signaled that it could finally take the world’s automakers head-on. Even as the Scorpio successfully battles multipurpose vehicles like Toyota’s Innova and GM’s Chevy Tavera at home, M&M has started marketing the SUV in South Africa, Spain and many other countries.

As a nation, Singapore’s stunning rise from third world to first world in a matter of 30 years was spearheaded by an intensive and rigorous closely-coordinated programme of nation branding. Today, brand Singapore attracts the investments, business, trade, tourism and talented human resources from all over the world which is helping it further to become more flourishing nation. This state is internationally known as a vibrant, safe, corruption-free place to do business. Name any of the great businesses of the world; everybody wants to be in Singapore! The vibrancy and liveliness of the nation in its culture and the fine art attracts more and more tourists. In global surveys of quality of life, Singapore regularly tops the charts.

Nation Branding is catching up rapidly: the brand must be accepted internally first, i.e domestically, meaning throughout the nation, by all stakeholders. Only then can it be effectively promoted internationally.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is a publication that was originated and compiled by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University to rank universities globally. This ranking has been conducted since 2003. It is conducted annually on well-thought and strategic parameters. The results are published by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy. This is one of its kind ranking.

The Chinese Government backed this ranking to provide a global benchmark against the various universities in China – this they did to assess their progress. The aim of the ARWU is for Chinese universities to do some hardcore and path breaking research in the area of science. The efforts taken by the Chinese Government in the area of higher education is praiseworthy.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities is considered one of the three most influential and widely observed international university rankings, in addition to the QS World University Rankings published by British Quacquarelli Symonds using the pre-existing methodology and innovative cooperation between Times Higher Education and Thomson Reuters.

While we look at strengths, weaknesses cannot be hidden either. The ARWU is criticized for its heavy focus on the natural science more than the social sciences or humanities and its explicit focus on research more than the quality of instruction.

The ranking consists of the following parameters:

International outlook: People, research (7.5%)

This category looks at diversity of students on campus and to what degree academics collaborate with international colleagues on research projects – both of these elements show how global an institution is in its outlook. The ability of a university to attract undergraduates and postgraduates from all over the world is the key to its success. The top universities also compete for the best faculty from around the globe. So in this category the aspect of international faculties is also given importance. The other indicator in this category is of the proportion of a university’s total research journal publications that have international co-authors. This parameter clearly shows importance of global approach that needs to be adopted by an institution.

Research: Volume, income, reputation (30%)

This category is made up of three indicators. The most prominent one is looking at a university’s reputation for research excellence among its peers. This category also looks at university research income, scaled against staff numbers and normalized for purchasing-power parity.
This is a contentious indicator because it can be influenced by national policy and economic wellbeing in a country. But, this indicator looks at the will of a University to spend money on research to increase its capability and thus considers that this is valid measure. Data is gathered to take account each university’s distinct subject profiles, reflecting the fact that research grants in science subjects are often bigger than those awarded for the social sciences, arts and humanities research. The research environment category also includes a simple measure of research productivity – research output scaled against staff numbers. The number of papers published in the academic journals indexed by Thomson Reuters is given lot of credibility. This gives an idea of an institution’s ability to get papers published in quality peer-reviewed journals.

Citations: Research influence (30%)

A citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression fixed in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion. This parameter attracts 30 percent of overall score. It looks at the role of universities in spreading new knowledge and ideas.

It examines research weight by capturing the number of times a university’s published work is cited by scholars globally. In 2014, Thomson Reuters examined more than 50 million citations to 6 million journal articles, published over five years. The data are drawn from the 12,000 academic journals indexed by Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science database and include all indexed journals published between 2007 and 2011. The citations help to show how much each university is contributing to the sum of human knowledge. It shows whose research has stood out, has been picked up and built on by other scholars and, most importantly, it has been shared around the global scholarly community to push further the boundaries of our collective understanding, irrespective of discipline. The ranking excludes any institution that publishes fewer than 200 papers a year to ensure that it has enough data to make statistically valid comparisons.

Citation helps referencing – it’s a way to give credit to the writers from whom scholars borrow words and ideas. By citing the work of a particular scholar students can acknowledge and respect the intellectual property rights of that researcher. A student/academician can draw on any of the millions of ideas, insights and arguments published by other writers, many of whom have spent years researching and writing. All that is needed is to acknowledge their contribution in newer building assignments.

Industry income: Innovation (2.5%)

A university/institute must essentially help industry with innovations, inventions and consultancy; it is its core mission. This category seeks to capture such “knowledge transfer” by looking at how much research income an institution earns from industry; it is scaled against the number of academic staff it employs. Industry income earned by innovation suggests the extent to which businesses are willing to pay for research and a university’s ability to attract funding in the competitive commercial marketplace.

It is a practical indicator of institutional quality. The Universities need to align education and research to meet the rising needs of industry and main concerns of the nation. The industry-academia interface must go to review the curriculum and pedagogy to ensure that they are pertinent and contemporary for the industry.

Teaching: The learning environment (30%)

This category employs five separate performance indicators designed to provide a clear sense of the teaching-learning process environment of each institution from both the student and the academic perspective. The teaching and learning category looks at staff-to-student ratio.
Where there is a healthy ratio of students to staff, the former will get the personal attention they require from the institution’s faculty. The teaching category also examines the ratio of doctoral to bachelor’s degrees awarded by each institution. It determines that institutions with a high density of research students are more knowledge-intensive and that the presence of an active postgraduate community is a marker of a research-led teaching environment valued by undergraduates and postgraduates. The doctorate-to-bachelor’s ratio is taken into consideration. The teaching category also uses data on the number of doctorates awarded by an institution, scaled against its size as measured by the number of academic staff it employs, as well as giving a sense of how committed an institution is to nurturing the next generation of academics, a high proportion of postgraduate research students also indicates the provision of teaching at the highest level that is thus attractive to graduates and effective at developing them.

Undergraduates also tend to value working in a rich environment that includes postgraduates. This indicator is normalized to take account of a university’s unique subject mix, reflecting the different volume of doctoral awards in different disciplines. The final indicator in the category is a simple measure of institutional income scaled against academic staff numbers.

This figure is adjusted for purchasing-power parity so that all nations may compete on a level playing field indicating the general status of an institution that gives a broad picture of the infrastructure and facilities available to students and staff.

Indian Universities/Institutions need to adhere to the global standards. The rankings parameters are usually based on tough standards. Only, Punjab University appears in the World University Rankings in the top 400 universities list for 2013-14. Although India has 42 central universities, 285 state universities, 130 deemed universities and 125 private universities, barely 3 or 4 of them are appreciated worldwide. Like Chinese Government backed Academic Ranking of World Universities to provide a global benchmarking for their universities for improving the educational standards, when will India raise its status?

According to a Times of India report based on QS BRICS 2014 University Rankings published on Tuesday, 29^th July 2014, India is the only country among BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that couldn’t find a place in its top 10 list. Barring Russia, all other nations in the group are developing countries and newly industrialized States. A low ranking for Indian universities among these five nations brings down status of India in the world. India needs to immediately streamline its educational policies to showcase its strengths in research and development. However tough the parameters of ranking might be, we need a strong policy framework in place to augment our educational levels. Let’s stop underestimating the importance of quality education.