India & Latin America

Story hook

It is 18 November 2024. PM Narendra Modi disembarks at Marco Aurelio Vasconcelos Airport, Rio de Janeiro for the G20 Leaders' Summit. Brazil — host of G20 in 2024 — hands the baton to India. But this Rio visit doubles as something more substantive — Modi spends 6 days in Brazil + Guyana, the longest India- Latin America presidential engagement in two decades.

In Guyana — a country of 800,000 people with 11 billion barrels of recoverable offshore crude — Modi is conferred the Order of Excellence, becomes the first Indian PM to address the National Assembly in 56 years (since Indira Gandhi in 1968), and signs 10 agreements. Guyana's President Mohamed Irfaan Ali is himself of Indian origin — his ancestors arrived as indentured labour in the 1830s. Guyana's population is ~40% Indian-origin — 4.7 lakh of the 8 lakh population.

Rewind to 25 January 2004. Lula da Silva of Brazil is Chief Guest at India's 55th Republic Day. Beside him stands a one-year- old grouping — IBSA Dialogue Forum — created by India, Brazil and South Africa on 6 June 2003 in Brasília. Five months later, on 17 June 2004, India signs a Framework Agreement with Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur) — the South American common market — and on 25 January 2004, an India-Mercosur Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) is initialled; signed June 2004; in force from 1 June 2009.

Two decades later, in early 2025, India and Mercosur announce they will expand the PTA — currently covering only 450 tariff lines each side — into a fuller trade agreement, possibly even an FTA. Latin America, the "forgotten continent" of Indian foreign policy, is moving from the periphery to the strategic agenda.

Why this matters for UPSC

India-LAC is asked once every 2-3 years in Mains GS-II as either a stand-alone or under the umbrella of "Global South diplomacy". Prelims has tested IBSA, Mercosur members, BRICS expansion (Argentina invited but declined). Interview boards probe the Lula 2.0 + Milei era + Indian diaspora in Guyana

• Suriname.