BRICS search interest fades beyond North India, Iran draws South, China dominates NE

Fresh updates from the financial markets indicate that BRICS remained the dominant geopolitical search theme in India over the weekend, as New Delhi hosted the 18th summit, but interest varied sharply depending on where people were searching from.

A Moneycontrol analysis of Google Trends data reveals that Delhi was by far the most BRICS-focused region, with interest in the grouping progressively losing ground to Iran and China across several parts of southern and northeastern India.

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Search interest in BRICS remained high across much of north and central India but the pattern softened further away from this cluster.

Delhi, which hosted the summit, recorded an interest score of 100, followed by Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh at 56 while Uttar Pradesh stood at 42 and Uttarakhand at 39.

Interest was considerably softer across most southern states. Karnataka had an interest score of 32, Telangana 27, Kerala 20, Andhra Pradesh 19 and Tamil Nadu 17 on BRICS.

A score of 100 indicates the location or point with the highest relative search interest and does not represent an absolute search count.

Iran gets a bigger share in parts of South

While BRICS dominated northern India's search mix, Iran occupied a relatively larger slice of geopolitical search interest in several southern states.

Iran accounted for just 8 percent of the BRICS-Iran-China search mix in Delhi and 10 percent in Uttar Pradesh. Its share was 11 percent in Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, among the three categories.

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By comparison, Iran's share was elevated at 17 percent each in Karnataka, Telangana and Kerala and 20 percent in Puducherry. Tamil Nadu recorded a 15 percent and Andhra Pradesh 14 percent.

The North-South divide, that stated, was not uniform, as Jammu and Kashmir led Iran related searches.

Iran and Kashmir share cultural ties, with students from the Valley going to that country for education, especially to study medicine.

Northeast searches tilt towards China

An even clearer geographical pattern emerges for China.

China accounted a elevated interest in Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya. The standalone China index tells a similar story. Manipur registered the maximum score of 100, followed by Tripura at 83, Meghalaya and Nagaland at 68 each, Mizoram at 66 and Arunachal Pradesh at 64.

Assam additionally recorded relatively high interest, with an index score of 49.

China borders parts of Northeast , with Arunachal Pradesh sharing  the longest frontier. It frequently renames locations, with focus on Arunachal to stake claim to the territory.

In August, too, it went on a renaming spree. The government responded by permanently mapping 27 key frontier locations on the Survey of India map.

BRICS stays the national story

Despite these regional differences, BRICS was comfortably the biggest of the three search themes nationally between September 12 and 13 when the national capital hosted the summit. Iran and China were the other two most searched themes.

Across the time-series data, BRICS recorded an average Google Trends interest score of around 61, more than twice China's 26 and more than four times Iran's 14.