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New Vistas in India-Brazil Relations
By Aparajita Gangopadhyay

For decades, India-Brazil relations have been low key though ‘friendly and cordial’. In large measure, their bilateralism was not grounded in any substantial institutional co-operation save the shared rhetoric of ‘South-South Cooperation’. By contrast, one witnesses today certain concrete initiatives on part of both these countries so as to impart substance to their bilateral relations. The lessons of history seem to have made them wiser as they are focusing on common interests rather than amplifying their differences. Brazil has shown increasing interest in Asia and the Pacific Rim. It acknowledges Asia’s fundamental importance for the world’s political stability. For instance, Brazil and China are actively engaged in producing satellites. The Brazilian drink Guarana is one of the favourites in China.

In the recent years, apart from recognising India as an emergent regional power, Brazil has come to appreciate its achievements in many fields. India, in turn, explicitly accepts Brazil as one of the biggest powers in the world, and particularly capable of influencing the power balance in Latin America. This recognition by India was recently institutionalised in the opening of the new consulate at Rio de Janeiro. The consulate aims to facilitate trade and commerce with Brazil and project India as a new potential ally.

The most visible sign of the newly found cosiness between India and Brazil concerns their common stand qua developing countries at various international fora-- be it the membership to the United Nations Security Council or the deliberations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). As ‘regional powers’, India and Brazil appear to have achieved a working level of coordination to put forward the case of the developing world before the strong group of the developed nations. At the official level, it is noteworthy that, in the last three months, the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have met twice.

Moreover, India and Brazil have tried to cooperate at other international forum as well. At the WTO, during the negotiation rounds, they presented a unified opposition to the arbitrary policy initiatives of the developed world. Recently, the Brazilian Foreign Minister completed a successful visit to India. Not surprisingly, the Brazilian President Lula is the chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations on 26 January 2004. Indeed, both India and Brazil have suffered at the hands of the WTO thanks to the latter’s capricious judgements. The Appellate Body of the WTO (in its report on 23 August 2003) rejected the legal issues regarding India’s quantitative restrictions maintained on grounds of the balance of payments. Similar ruling was made against Brazil over subsidies to aircraft exports.

At Cancun round of the WTO talks, the actions of the developing world was characterised by a measure of combined efforts. The developing countries were particularly unhappy with the manner in which their interests were ignored at Cancun. By virtue of their unified front, they attempted to influence the agenda of the present round of talks so as to reflect the inclusion of their common concerns. This ultimately led to the creation of the Group of 22, a group of developing nations like India, Brazil, Mexico and many others from Asia, Africa and Latin America who shared the same predicament. India and Brazil are the leaders of G–22 notwithstanding their diametrically opposite farm trade agenda. It was this willingness to work for a common cause amidst differences that facilitated the emergence of a developing-country coalition at Cancun. The G-22 posed a direct challenge to the trade majors in agriculture. The credit goes to Brazil for championing the cause of farm trade reform at the Cancun meeting. Expectedly, India’s protectionist agenda diverged from the Brazilian interests. Surely, it is a sign of growing maturity of the bilateral relations that their divergent interests do not degenerate into mutual antagonism.

Although it was during the term of President Cardoso that India-Brazil relations moved beyond the plane of studied indifference, the issue of permanent membership to the Security Council has sparked off the new alliance between the two. The restructuring of the United Nations has been a long-standing demand of the developing countries. Some developed countries have also lent support to this demand. The United Nations has, over the years, grown disproportionately as today it deals with not merely security concerns, wars, and peacekeeping but also with humanitarian issues, elections, infrastructural support, and civic and ethnic conflicts. Countries like India, Brazil and South Africa have consistently staked their claims for the Security Council membership on the basis of various criteria such as, their consistent support to the UN activities, regular supply of troops for peacekeeping, good record in paying the dues to the United Nations, their geographical sizes, populations, strategic locations, democratic polities. Against this backdrop, India, Brazil and South Africa formed a ‘Trilateral Commission’ in June 2003 to pursue vigorously the issue of their entry as permanent members in the Security Council. The Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorin in an interview to the Indian daily, The Hindu, said, “India, Brazil and South Africa were the natural candidates… with a reasonable degree of stability and internal harmony” (The Hindu, 22.10.03).

India and Brazil in the recent years have worked towards improving their relationship on multiple fronts. This has manifested not only in the increased bilateral trade that has reached $ 1 billion, but also in the field of defence co-operation. India has agreed to purchase 5 civilian Embraer aircrafts from Brazil. In the long run, Brazil could be India’s new strategic partner as it has established its credentials in the field of air defence surveillance systems. The visit of the Brazilian Defence Minister Jose Vieges Filho to India has imparted a fillip to defence cooperation between India and Brazil. The two have signed an agreement laying special emphasis on cooperation in areas such as aeronautics and shipbuilding. Proposals concerning military-to-military cooperation, jungle warfare, jungle survival training and integrated air defence management have also been discussed.

On the trade front, the Indian pharmaceutical industries have already begun to make inroads into the Brazilian markets because of their reliable quality and competitive pricing. Besides, India is in the process of negotiating an agreement with MERCOSUR, the South Cone Common Market to expand free trade. This would imply that in addition to Brazil, India would have freer market access to Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay as well.

India-Brazil relations are undergoing promising metamorphosis. True, the two have unique set of regional issues to deal with. Understandably, very often they are mired in the trials and tribulations of their respective regional geopolitics. Nonetheless, the newly found camaraderie between the two augurs well for the prospects of a healthy and meaningful bilateral relationship. Their unified thinking, common goals and collaborative political action at global fora portend the contours of such a relationship. The bilateral economic and defence agreements inaugurate a substantive step in that direction. In the ultimate analysis, the future of Indo-Brazil relations is predicated on their ability to project a unified front in the midst of challenges emanating from globalization and the attendant dangers of a unipolar world.