As PM Modi visits Brazil, 3 things to know about India's ties with the country

Indian Express

2 days ago

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Brazil on Sunday (July 6) to attend the two-day BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit. He will remain in the country till July 8 as part of his state visit — the first by an Indian Prime Minister to Brazil in nearly six decades.
According to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), the PM will travel to the capital city, Brasilia, where he will hold bilateral discussions with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on broadening the Strategic Partnership in areas of mutual interest, including trade, defence, energy, space, technology, agriculture, and health.
Here are some key things to know about the India-Brazil bilateral relationship.
1. Despite the distance, the countries have had contact since colonial times.
A Portuguese explorer, Pedro Alvares Cabral, landed on the East Coast of Brazil in 1500, two years after Vasco de Gama had landed in India. Cabral's visit would mark the beginning of more than three centuries of colonial rule in Brazil, while the Portuguese rule in Goa would last for more than 450 years.
Being outposts of the Portuguese imperialist empire, Goa and Brazil had trade exchanges and cultural similarities. During this period, coconut and mango crops arrived in Brazil from India for the first time, while Brazil sent cashew nuts here. Apart from this, Indian cattle breeds were also exported to Brazil, which has now formed over 80% of the country's livestock, known as 'Nelore' locally (after Nellore in Andhra Pradesh).
Modern-day diplomatic ties between India and Brazil were established in 1948, soon after India gained independence in 1947. In 1961, Brazil opposed India's 'Operation Vijay' that liberated Goa from Portuguese rule, and Indo-Brazil relations did not flourish for many decades.
However, in the 1990s, both India and Brazil undertook economic reforms, following which, the trade relations between the two countries expanded. According to the MEA, in 2024-25, bilateral trade reached $12.20 billion, with Indian exports to Brazil amounting to $6.77 billion and imports from Brazil totalling $5.43 billion.
Major Indian exports to Brazil include processed petroleum products (diesel), agrochemicals (insecticides, fungicides), chemicals, pharmaceuticals, engineering products, textured filament yarn, and unwrought aluminium. Brazilian exports to India included crude oil, soya oil, gold (non-monetary), raw sugar, cotton, gum, wood and turpentine oils, chemicals (carboxylic acids) and iron ore and concentrates.
Today, about 4,000 Indians live in Brazil. Most major Indian IT and pharmaceutical companies have their offices in São Paulo. Additionally, companies like the Aditya Birla Group and Sterlite have offices in the country.
As strategic partners, India and Brazil have several institutional mechanisms to coordinate various aspects of their bilateral relationship. This includes the Joint Commission Meeting (JCM at Foreign Minister level) and the Strategic Dialogue (between National Security Advisers). A 2+2 Political-Military dialogue was initiated, which had its first meeting in 2024.
Both Brazil and India are members of plurinational forums like BRICS, G-20, G-4, International Solar Alliance, and Biofuture Platform. In recent years, both emerging economies have sought greater space for the Global South nations on the world stage.
However, Brazil's GDP growth rates have slowed in the last decade or so, with several state corruption scandals emerging. In 2017, Brazil's Senate voted to remove then-President Dilma Rousseff from office for manipulating the budget, removing her left-wing Workers' Party from power after 13 years.
Even before her ouster, she was massively unpopular owing to rising inflation and unemployment, as well as a major corruption scandal at state-run oil giant Petrobras. It came just a few months before Rio was scheduled to host the 2016 Olympics, which marked the first time the games were held in South America.