What did the 21{+s}{+t} Congress of the Communist Party of India at Patna have in common with the BRICS summit held a few days earlier in New Delhi?

The photo-ops were like curtain calls, a visual representation loaded with significance. At Patna, the outgoing CPI secretary, Mr A.B.Bardhan, and his successor, Mr Sudhakar Reddy, with veteran Mr D. Raja, held hands raised aloft, posed for the media as did the BRICS members at the conclusion of their deliberations in the capital.

The gesture, “We are the world!” expresses both unity and greeting overlain with the promise of a positive, a confident future; the raised hands symbolise a chain of continuity, solidarity and commitment, though sometimes it's not clear to what end.

Continuity and emptiness

In the case of the CPI, it was an assurance to the faithful of continuity, of the party's ability to pass the baton to the next generation of leaders without disruptions.

In that sense it was a sign of victory, not unlike football teams at the end of a match, whose similar expression of self-congratulation on fulfilling an assigned purpose beams a message of both victory and greeting to screaming fans.

The BRICS photo-op was meant to transmit similar meanings. But to whom: Where is its constituency that was meant to be assured by that dramatic gesture of purposive solidarity?

Clearly it doesn't exist, except in the corridors of heads of state serving up for themselves a pastiche of expedients for partisan interests. The sum of the parts doesn't add up to a collective good; China clearly uses the BRICS' shoulder to fire at America for its persistent demand for currency reform.

The fastest growing economy views the renminbi as an alternative to the dollar and the BRICS platform as a testing ground for its viability as the world's eventual medium of exchange.

Russia similarly would like to ward off too much criticism of Mr Putin's recent victory; it, too, would like to reclaim some of the status lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union and reasserted, albeit hesitantly, since Mr Putin's ascendancy.

Both Russia and China have specific objectives, unstated but in plain sight.

Neither needs the BRICS to shore up their respective domestic economies, least of all China; India needs funds for infrastructure though it is nervous about its huge looming neighbour as it has always been; South Africa and Brazil want friends outside the EU-US bloc but almost every member hedges its bets when it comes to hard stances on issues it has frowned upon since 2008, such as Iran, Wall Street capitalism and the power of a weak dollar.

Limited impact

It's likely that the New Delhi summit will yield locally specific results: intra-BRIC trading will increase, perhaps the committee set up to think through the BRICS bank will end fruitfully, though no one should bet on it.

At the end of the day, BRICS will remain a talking shop with marginal benefits, because each member has cast one eye firmly on the major Western economies, including China that draws its huge trade surplus from exporting to the two major importing economies, the US and the EU.

So is the BRICS worthless?

So long as BRICS remains stuck in a discourse rooted in neo-liberalism, and focused on the Bretton Woods agencies (and this includes yearning for the top job at both), it will amount to little other than copy and sound bytes for the media.

Roots of new vision

But should they look inwards each may discover unique qualities that, like bricks, add up to a bedrock for a perspective more sustaining and more meaningful for a lot more countries than the premises on which the world has been erected.

It would prove more meaningful and disturbing to the established discourse than any angry communiques from BRICS summits or expressions of solidarity.

Restoration, not retribution: South Africa showed the world an alternative method of dealing with gross human rights violations after the end of Apartheid through its Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.

That form of restorative justice has given the world an alternative to the Nuremberg War Trials, or retributive justice model which, the dominant discourse would have us believe, is the path to peace in the world.

Gift economy: India offers unique alternatives to exchange-based growth models whose avariciousness and its consequences is evident all around the world.

The “gift economy” model begun at Vipassana Igatpuri, itself an ancient Buddhist monastic tradition, and has spread across the world; the gift economy offers BRICS a chance to aid poor nations and those “latecomers” to development with models of growth that can help them bypass the ravages of the dominant economic model, and thus pass on the benefits to future generations.

Measuring threats: If the BRICS are united in one sense, it is by the threat that their individual growth rates pose both to the environment and thereby to their respective futures.

In 2003, China experimented with a Green GDP that factored pollution costs into standard GDP measurement.

The results were so devastating that it soon gave up the noteworthy experiment even as the environment continues to take a huge toll on the people.

The BRICS countries are major polluters and denouncing this reality as a Western attempt at disrupting growth is like shooting oneself in the foot repeatedly.

Wellbeing instead of GDP: Instead, BRICS could adopt a more proactive role by picking up the Chinese experiment with “Green” GDP. BRICS could go further to propose a broader idea of prosperity, taking off from the concept of “well-being” proposed by the Joseph Stiglitz-led commission.

What BRICS needs is a radically different agenda for an exhausted world. Otherwise it remains just another brick in the wall.

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