A story in India’s Economic Times this Friday headlined: “Elephant, Dragon & Bear: Modi, Xi and Putin May Converge at BRICS for a Big Power Play,” suggests that, while a three-way meeting between the heads of state of India, China and Russia, who are all in New Delhi for this weekend’s BRICS summit, is considered highly unlikely, it “would make for a striking image.”

All three had attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek at the beginning of the month, but the three coming together at a summit hosted by India could carry a different historical weight. Economic Times refers to “the Russia-India-China, or RIC, format ... first proposed by then Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov during a visit to Delhi in 1998, as a `strategic triangle’ to offset a unipolar world order.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has recently suggested the RIC format be revived, the Indian daily reminds. “Beijing has said it is open to the idea. India’s position, according to the Ministry of External Affairs, is that a meeting will be worked out `in a mutually convenient manner,’ language unchanged for over a year.” But the idea is there.

In any case, Economic Times adds, “that a stabilized India-China relationship could matter for BRICS well beyond the optics of any Modi-Xi meeting, given that differences between the bloc’s two largest Asian members have repeatedly limited its outcomes.” Here, the daily cited the failure of the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New Delhi in May to issue any joint declaration, “after members could not agree on language covering the West Asia conflict.”