Lula or Bolsonaro: Why Brazil’s presidential election matters for Brics and India

 Brics began with five members and grew to eleven after the 2024 expansion, with Indonesia the newest, joining in 2025. Brazil opposed the enlargement, particularly because of the one nation. Iran. It feared that adding the avowedly anti-West Islamic Republic would cost the group its cohesion. Like India, Brazil wants Brics to be reformist and not revolutionary, thereby limiting it to a body that argues for change inside the existing order rather than one that tries to replace it. Brics began with five members and grew to eleven after the 2024 expansion, with Indonesia the newest, joining in 2025. Brazil opposed the enlargement, particularly because of the one nation. Iran. It feared that adding the avowedly anti-West Islamic Republic would cost the group its cohesion. Like India, Brazil wants Brics to be reformist and not revolutionary, thereby limiting it to a body that argues for change inside the existing order rather than one that tries to replace it.