Which country took over the chairmanship of BRICS on January 1, 2024 ?

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Correct — A, Russia. The BRICS chair rotates on a calendar-year basis, and 2024 was Russia's year: the chairmanship ran under the banner of the Russian chairmanship with its own official site, brics-russia2024.ru, and it culminated in the 16th BRICS summit at Kazan from 22 to 24 October 2024, chaired by President Vladimir Putin under the theme 'Strengthening Multilateralism for Fair Global Development and Security'. The year matters because 1 January 2024 was a double turning point for the grouping. It was the date on which the chairmanship passed to Russia, and it was also the date on which the expansion agreed at the previous summit took effect: at the 15th summit in Johannesburg in August 2023, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa had announced invitations to Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with membership scheduled from 1 January 2024. Argentina declined by letter on 29 December 2023 and Saudi Arabia held back, so BRICS entered Russia's chairmanship year with nine members rather than eleven — Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE having joined the original five. Kazan was therefore the first summit those four attended as members, and it produced the Kazan Declaration, the BRICS Pay initiative for cross-border settlement outside the Western interbank system, and a new category of thirteen partner countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Nigeria and Turkey. Indonesia went on to become the tenth full member on 6 January 2025, the first Southeast Asian state in the bloc, announced during Brazil's chairmanship year.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) India chaired BRICS in 2021 and hosted the 13th summit on 9 September 2021, held by video conference under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with more than 150 events and meetings through that year. It is the most tempting option for an Indian candidate, and it becomes right again later — India holds the chairmanship in 2026 — but not in 2024.  (c) Brazil took the chair the year after Russia, in 2025, and it was Brazil's presidency that announced Indonesia's accession as the tenth member on 6 January 2025. Being adjacent in the rotation is precisely what makes it a good distractor: a candidate who knows the order but not the year has a fifty per cent chance of picking the wrong side of it.  (d) South Africa held the chair in 2023 and hosted the 15th summit at Johannesburg from 22 to 24 August 2023 — the summit that agreed the expansion taking effect on 1 January 2024. That is the trap: the decision most closely associated with 1 January 2024 was taken under South Africa's chairmanship, but the chairmanship itself passed to Russia on that date.

Concept: BRICS is an intergovernmental grouping without a charter, a treaty or a permanent secretariat; it runs on an annually rotating chairmanship, and the chair sets the year's calendar of ministerial and working-group meetings and hosts the leaders' summit. Its origins are twofold: the acronym BRIC was coined by the economist Jim O'Neill at Goldman Sachs in 2001 as a label for four large emerging markets, while the diplomatic grouping grew out of earlier formats such as RIC and IBSA and held its first leaders' summit in 2009. South Africa was admitted in September 2010 and attended as a full member from the third summit in 2011, which is when BRIC became BRICS. The expansion of 2024 nearly doubled the membership, and Indonesia's accession in January 2025 took it to ten. The bloc's institutional creations are worth knowing alongside the summits: the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, both set out in the Fortaleza Declaration of 2014. On the numbers usually quoted, the enlarged grouping accounts for roughly 46 per cent of the world's population and about a quarter of its land area, and its share of world GDP measured at purchasing power parity was around 35.6 per cent in 2022.

State PCS 2024 Q118 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q118 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer