THE PAST AND PRESENT OF  TRADE RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIA AND BRAZIL

India and Brazil are the emerging nations that hold similar principles on democracy, human rights, global governance and liberal strategies. They are partners on the basis of trade relations and have a lot to learn from each other. With their uniting stance on various multilateral and forums, the two countries are considered to be important for the creation of a new world order. Both the countries have huge potential to grow bilaterally. However, they require aggressive political will to strengthen their association.

Despite the many common challenges and a shared BRICS and IBSA identity, India remains remarkably underexplored by Brazilian academics and policy makers, and India-related decisions are often based not on country-specific information, but on vaguely defined images and concepts, the most prominent of which is the South-South partnership promoted by Brazil’s former President Lula da Silva. Brazil’s diplomatic presence in India remains far smaller than in countries such as France, Italy or China. This lack of knowledge is surprising given the near consensus about India’s long-term economic growth and certain medium-term importance in both the political and economic realms. Brazil’s India strategy is strong on grand rhetoric and high-profile encounters, but it is yet to be seen whether Brazil is able and willing to engage India in a more lasting and substantive partnership.

How can we explain this gap? A look into the past can be instructive. The history of India-Brazil relations, though generally benign, is marked by accidental and haphazard encounters. Five centuries ago, the Portuguese seafarer Pedro Alvares Cabral, on his way to India, was blown off course and landed on the Brazilian coast. After some initial excitement about the discovery, the Portuguese came to regard Brazil as much less strategically or economically valuable than India, and the South American discovery remained an emergency pit stop for ships that had run into technical or logistical problems. Still, this was enough to allow for the exchange of plants between India and Brazil early on. Manioc and cashew, both native to Brazil, were introduced in India, and India’s coconut and mango entered Brazil. While introduced much later, most of the cattle in Brazil today are of Indian origin.

Yet, for the following centuries ties between the Portuguese and British colony lay largely dormant. Upon gaining independence in 1947, the Indian government allocated land for important allies’ embassies along Shanti Path, the most luxurious street in New Delhi’s diplomatic neighbourhood, but the Latin American nations were not considered. The region, including Brazil, was simply not on India’s diplomatic or economic radar. Very much the same applied to India in Brazil, which was seen as an exotic place too far removed from Brazil’s more immediate concerns in its region.

Until well into the 1960s, there was not a single trade agreement between the two, and no more than 20 Indian visas were issued for Brazilians annually, most of them for diplomats. Despite the mutual ignorance, India did figure in the Brazilian universe as an ally in spirit. Particularly for Brazil’s leaders with a more developmentalist outlook, India’s world view seemed to be largely aligned with its own, and in the 1960s, the recently-founded UNCTAD (UN Conference on Trade and Development) and the G-77 were platforms that allowed both countries to articulate joint positions on several important issues.

For example, both Brazil and India were highly critical of nuclear weapons early on, and both condemned the enactment of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1967, calling it an attempt to ‘freeze’ the international power structure to contain emergent powers such as Brazil. Both countries supported the idea that rich countries should use the money not spent on arms to help developing countries fight poverty. The ‘3 Ds’ (disarmament, development, decolonization) represented an important aspect of their foreign policy. Although India embraced its natural claim to global power status earlier, and in a less ambiguous fashion, there seemed to be a common notion that the current, western dominated world order was fundamentally unjust, and that Brazil and India would somehow play an important role in correcting this plight.

Ties,However suffered after the signing of the US-India nuclear deal of 2005,In which the United States recognized India as a nuclear power. Brazil harshly criticized the deal. Aiding India’s nuclear weapons programme, the Brazilian government argued, violated theNPT, which banned such help to any country not recognized as a nuclear power by the treaty. Brazil had signed the treaty and refrained from developing nuclear weapons. India, Brazil claimed, had disregarded the rules andwas rewarded for it. Worse, India continued to refuse to sign the NPT (although accepting India to the NPT as a nuclear weapon state would have been unlikely anyway, since this would require the approval of all189 signatories to the treaty).

Yet Lula, believing in the long-term benefits of the partnership, sought to not let the disturbances permanently damage flourishing Brazil-India relations, and the two countries continued their project to strengthen ties. In 2004, a trade agreement between Mercosur and India was signed, and although it covers less than 1000 products, it did point towards a mutual willingness to strengthen economic ties. Trade be-tween the two grew from (US) $ 0.4 billion in 1999 to $2 billion in 2005, and to $5.6 billion in 2009, approaching $10 billion in 2011. In 2006, Manmohan Singh was the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Brazil in almost four decades.. In 2014,On the international front, the question of regional leader- ship comes to mind. Both Brazil and India seek to change the balance of power of international institutions such as the UN Security Council, while China is more of a status-quo power.In general, from both the Brazilian and Indian point of view, China may be in a different league altogether, and morecomparable to the United States.IBSA thus allows for interaction among equals, while the BRICS alliance is clearly dominated by China.

By-Arzoo Cheema