The IBSA Dialogue Forum

Origin

The India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum was established in 2003, formalised by the Brasilia Declaration of 6 June 2003, with the inaugural summit in Brazil. Formation was motivated by dissatisfaction with the stagnation of the Doha Development Agenda in 2001. India’s objective → reassert leadership among developing countries while avoiding the anti-Western stance characteristic of NAM.

Areas of cooperation

• Advancing a democratic global order and pressing for reform of global governance institutions to increase the representation and influence of developing nations.
• The IBSA Fund — each member contributing $1 million annually for small-scale projects in developing countries across infrastructure, healthcare, education and poverty alleviation. Managed with UNOSSC and UNDP, it has crossed US$50 million in cumulative contributions and allocations and operates across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
• Active working groups → Defence, Blue Economy, Energy, Trade/Investment/Infrastructure, Agriculture, Tourism, Customs/Tax.

Significance and challenges

• Valuable for developing nations through a bottom-up approach emphasising consultation, expertise sharing and community involvement; the Fund’s projects earned the MDG Award in 2010.
• IBSA has encountered difficulty and is currently in a period of inactivity. The summit scheduled for Delhi in 2012 was postponed indefinitely.
• Shifting national priorities, increased bilateral engagement and changing geopolitical dynamics have reduced momentum. Member priorities sometimes diverge — on the pace of trade liberalisation, and on obligations to regional blocs such as MERCOSUR and SACU. The rise of an expanded BRICS can overshadow IBSA’s bandwidth.
• Renewal requires political will from all three members, building on past achievements in sustainable development, climate change, technology transfer and trade.

India and the WTO — the record

• After 1947 India adopted a protectionist model built on import substitution; this shifted in the early 1990s after the balance of payments crisis, towards liberalization and integration.
• India joined GATT in 1948 as one of the original 23 countries, which laid the foundation for its later engagement with the WTO.
• The WTO, established in 1995 as successor to GATT, promotes predictable, non-discriminatory trade through tariff-cutting and rules on non-tariff barriers, with principles such as Most-Favoured-Nation and national treatment, special and differential treatment for developing members, and a dispute settlement system.
• The WTO comprises 166 member states, accounting for over 98 per cent of global trade.
• India’s participation offers advocacy for developing countries, influence on trade rules in agriculture and services, support for regional trade negotiation, and space to press for trade policies aligned with sustainable development.

The Doha Round and the North–South divide

The Doha Development Agenda, launched in 2001, set out to place development at the core of multilateral trade reform — agriculture, industrial tariffs (NAMA) and services, alongside rules on subsidies, trade remedies and special and differential treatment. Progress has stalled because developed and developing countries prioritise different outcomes and interpret development obligations differently.

Systemic challenges

• Asymmetric reciprocity expectations → developed members seek market access commensurate with emerging economies’ growth; developing members insist on historical responsibility and policy space.
• Erosion of trust → limited delivery on agriculture in earlier rounds has hardened positions.
• Dispute settlement strain → the Appellate Body’s paralysis since 2019 has weakened enforcement credibility and reduced incentives to undertake new bindings.

Where the Round stands

• Some elements have been picked off, such as the elimination of agricultural export subsidies in the 2015 Nairobi Package.
• Core pillars remain unresolved → agriculture domestic support, SSM and Special Products, meaningful operationalisation of SDT, and balanced NAMA and services outcomes.
• Fisheries-subsidies talks have seen partial progress outside the strict Doha template; plurilateral pushes and uneven ministerial outcomes have shifted attention away from a single comprehensive conclusion.

India’s coalitional diplomacy

• India’s involvement in the WTO is marked by a blend of intellectual activism, coalition-building and a commitment to developmental multilateralism.
• Through the G20, G33 and IBSA, India has advocated for Least Developed Countries and developing nations, particularly on food security and public stockholding rights.
• Amrita Narlikar · Alberto Rizzi and Rajesh Rajagopalan hold that India has perfected the art of coalitional diplomacy, using alliances to punch above its weight. By aligning with other developing countries, India has advocated trade equity and reshaped the discourse around global trade norms; this diplomacy is a model for how smaller nations can exert influence in multilateral negotiations.

“Developing countries can punch above their weight in multilateral institutions.”

Amrita Narlikar

India’s leadership role at the WTO for the Global South

Public diplomacy and agenda-setting → India’s ability to set the global agenda is visible in its consistent use of public diplomacy, through articles in prominent publications and statements by trade negotiators such as Piyush Goyal and Rajiv Bhatia. The TRIPS waiver, the debate on food security and the push for a digital economy agenda reflect India’s proactive role as a global norm entrepreneur.

The TRIPS waiver debate

• In October 2020, India and South Africa submitted a proposal to the WTO to suspend intellectual property on all COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics until widespread vaccination could help achieve immunity in low- and middle-income countries. The proposal responded to the hoarding of essential medical equipment by countries of the global North at the beginning of the pandemic.
• After over 18 months, in March 2022, a “compromise text” emerged — the result of high-level consultations between the EU, India, South Africa and the US, coordinated by WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and known as the WTO DG text. Other than the EU, none of the sponsoring quartet publicly expressed official support.
• Civil society, public health advocates and academics criticized the text as reflecting the negotiating positions of the EU and US, and as too narrow for the inequities of COVID-19.

The critique in specifics

• New “burdensome, unnecessary, TRIPS-plus requirements for countries seeking to issue a compulsory license”, particularly in notification procedures.
• Patents were covered, but the draft did not address barriers arising from confidential information and trade secrets held by corporations or contained in regulatory submissions.
• Eligibility requirements still excluded too many low- and middle-income countries from producing, supplying, exporting and importing even vaccines.
• The measures created more legal uncertainty than existing TRIPS flexibilities, because of textual ambiguity and a confusing structure.
• Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and the People’s Vaccine Alliance described it as a reiteration of existing TRIPS flexibilities with a narrow export waiver and additional cumbersome requirements, and noted that many affected WTO members were not part of the negotiations.
• The final compromise at the 12th Ministerial Conference in 2022 relaxed IP rules only for COVID-19 vaccines, not for diagnostics and therapeutics.
• C. Raja Mohan and India’s own critique hold that the compromise was insufficient because it failed to address systemic issues in technology transfer and pandemic preparedness. Shyam Saran argues existing IP rules still hinder the ability of developing countries to respond swiftly to health emergencies. Harsh V. Pant and S. Jaishankar emphasise that the initiative was about saving lives, not simply negotiating trade terms.

The WTO and the Global South

• Jagdish Bhagwati · Konark Bhandari highlights the benefits the Global South can derive from the system: participation in global trade gives access to larger markets, attracts foreign investment, and enables technology transfer. He acknowledges the challenges but holds that the WTO provides a framework for advancing developing-country interests.
• Special and differential treatment → longer transition periods and preferential market access. The Agreement on Agriculture gave flexibility in subsidies to support farmers and food security; the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing helped integrate textile industries into the global trading system.
• Technical assistance → help in implementing agreements and building intellectual property regimes compatible with development goals, balancing innovation protection against access to essential medicines.
• Capacity building → analysing trade policies, identifying areas for improved competitiveness, strengthening customs administration.
• Dispute settlement → developing nations have used it effectively to challenge unfair trade practices of developed countries, with favourable outcomes.

Scholarly perspectives

• India’s approach is rooted in constructivist principles, reshaping global discourse on public goods and equity.
• Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye’s theory of complex interdependence describes the multidimensional character of India’s WTO engagement across trade, security, technology and health.
• India’s leadership in the Doha Round and its role in South–South cooperation reflect developmental priorities and a commitment to inclusive growth, as discussed by Suhasini Haidar and Rajiv Bhatia. Baylis and Smith’s work on Global Politics situates India’s position as leader of the Global South within the wider structures of global political order.

“For India, fairness in global trade is not just policy, it is a principle.”

S. Jaishankar

The tariff shock and the multilateral trading system, 2025–26

“We reiterate that these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable. India will take all actions necessary to protect its national interests.”

Ministry of External Affairs, 6 August 2025

How the pool reads it

• Shoumitro Chatterjee (Carnegie) → the episode shows that India’s post-2017 inward turn had raised the cost of relying on the home market.
• Konark Bhandari → India’s conduct was tactical altruism: concessions offered without demanding an immediate return.
• Elizabeth Threlkeld, Daniel Markey and Akriti Vasudeva Kalyankar (Stimson) → the long standoff let China, Russia, Pakistan and Europe each gain ground.
• Harsh V. Pant and Vivek Mishra (ORF) → India absorbed the pressure, kept growing, and reached greater parity with Washington.
• Chietigj Bajpaee (Chatham House) → equidistance can read as disengagement; India needs a more proactive rather than passive strategic autonomy.
• Milan Vaishnav and co-authors (Carnegie) → tactical adjustment, not strategic rupture; the volatility confirmed the value of spreading India’s bets.

“India’s response to Trump 2.0 has been characterized less by strategic rupture than by tactical adjustment.”

Milan Vaishnav (ed.), Carnegie Endowment, 2026

For the Southern argument the significance is structural: tariffs set unilaterally and far above bound commitments, justified by national-emergency powers, bypass the consensus machinery that developing members rely on. The demand to revive the Appellate Body and restore the two-tiered adjudicative system is therefore a Global South interest before it is a procedural one.

Trade diversification as hedge — CETA, the EU FTA and CBAM

The argument

• Chietigj Bajpaee (Chatham House) → the run of agreements reaffirms strategic autonomy: they were settled while Washington raised tariffs and pressed India over Russian oil, and they show a wish to avoid dependence on any single country.
• Shairee Malhotra (ORF) → a shift towards more predictable partners, protecting strategic autonomy and economic resilience.
• Sankalp Gurjar (ORF Occasional Paper No. 542) → read through geoeconomics, economic tools deployed for geopolitical ends.
• Alberto Rizzi (ECFR) → the same lens from the European side: a wider partner network, less reliance on an unpredictable United States, and a way of keeping India from drifting into a more anti-Western camp.
• The sceptical case → Mark Linscott (Atlantic Council) expects only a modest economic effect, since EU tariffs are already low and gains may be offset by the removal of GSP preferences that kept Indian textiles competitive with Bangladesh; he also notes the final push in the EU talks began before the latest US tariffs. The GTRI flags the price of concessions: car import duties cut from over 100 per cent to 10 per cent, limits on compulsory licensing in the IP chapter, and the opening of government procurement — all of which narrow policy space for Make in India.
• Gopalika Arora (ORF) → CBAM is the sharpest unresolved friction, and how it is settled will decide how much the deal finally delivers.
• De-risking, not decoupling → Amit Kumar (Takshashila) finds almost all Chinese exports to India substitutable, so Beijing’s scope for economic coercion is narrow and de-risking is the sensible course.

“India’s geoeconomics since 2019 rests on three pillars: rejection of the RCEP, strategy of Atmanirbharta for promoting domestic industrialisation, and signing new FTAs with strategically important countries. All three are in service of a single goal: managing its China challenge.”

Sankalp Gurjar, ORF Occasional Paper No. 542

“India, faced with US tariffs, is pushing for certainty in its trade relations, while Europe is seeking diversification to reduce reliance on an increasingly erratic American administration.”

Alberto Rizzi, ECFR

Why this belongs to the Southern account

CBAM sits in the same North–South argument as TRIPS and agricultural subsidies: a measure written in the developed world whose compliance cost falls on developing-country exporters, met by an assurance rather than an exemption. Iván Gonzalez-Pujol supplies the theory — hedging as a mixed strategy of cooperation and competition under uncertainty, with free trade agreements as its instrument of economic diversification.

The New International Economic Order

• The NIEO emerged in the 1970s as a developing-country agenda to correct structural inequities embedded in the post-war economy. Its rationale was that the rules were written when most of the Global South lacked voice and independence.
• The UN General Assembly’s 1974 Declaration on the Establishment of a NIEO and its Programme of Action crystallised these priorities. India, along with other NAM countries of Africa, championed the demand.

Content of the demand: Sovereign equality · Participation in decision-making · Policy space · Terms of trade · Regulation of TNCs · Technology transfer · Development finance · Monetary reform

Operating slogans → “trade, not aid”, industrialisation, agricultural support for food security, concessional finance, and access to technology.

From the 1974 demand to the recast agenda. 1974 (UNGA Declaration + Programme of Action; NAM and G77 carry the demand) → Dilution (Globalisation shifts national priorities; NAM declines; the collective economic agenda thins) → Integration (India moves from demand-side advocate of redistribution to rule-reforming stakeholder that also gains from openness) → Recast (Incremental rule-reform, new institution-building, South–South partnership, technology-enabled inclusion)

Continuity and change in India’s position

Assessment

• India’s rhetoric is less redistributive than in the 1970s and more focused on practical reform, coalition-building, and delivery through projects and standards.
• Tensions arise → between deeper liberalisation and protection for livelihoods and infant industry, and between stronger IP regimes and access objectives. These are managed through calibrated negotiating positions rather than abandonment of first principles.
• India’s rise has not ended its concern with a New International Economic Order; it has recast that concern — from sweeping overhaul to incremental rule-reform, new institution-building, South–South partnership and technology-enabled inclusion.

India’s diplomacy for the Global South

Platforms into outcomes — how the diplomacy works. PLATFORMS (G77 · IBSA · UNCTAD · WTO · BRICS · G20) → CONVENING & COALITION (Voice of the Global South Summits · G20 Presidency · technical activism) → OUTCOMES (African Union into the G20 · TRIPS waiver campaign · DAKSHIN · ISA, Mission LiFE, Global Biofuels Alliance). FEEDBACK: delivery and disbursement decide whether summit consensus becomes institutional change.

Institutional platforms

• India’s commitment to South–South cooperation was institutionalized through the Group of 77, the IBSA Dialogue Forum, and active participation in UNCTAD and WTO negotiations. Technical and educational assistance, particularly ITEC, provided training and capacity building.
• Within the G77, the coalition “has the purpose of enabling us to deal on terms of greater equality with an existing Center of Power … unity is our instrument”.
• Recent UN processes show the bloc pressing systemic questions beyond trade rules: members pressed for “reform of the international financial architecture”, seeking “increased participation in the international financial institutions” and more financing.
• Capacity constraints are real → “the group is not always able to reach a position because of internal disagreements”, and when it does, decision-making can be “imperfect”.

“Strategic autonomy has been the defining value … we must renovate that value for the twenty-first century.” — Sunil Khilnani, Rajiv Kumar, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and others, Nonalignment 2.0

The Voice of the Global South Summits

• Held in January and November 2023, and again in 2024; over 120 countries, including 21 Heads of State, deliberating on climate change, debt distress and food insecurity.
• Rooted in Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and in the vision of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas — inclusive growth and trust-based cooperation.
• Sushil Kumar notes that India’s presidency “brought Voice of the Global South to the centre stage … including the African Union as a member of the G20”. Summit priorities, “supported by 125 countries”, fed into an agenda on the SDGs, climate finance, digital public infrastructure and debt.
• India used the Summit to outline sectors — health, education, finance, connectivity, climate — and launched DAKSHIN, a Global South Centre of Excellence.
• Amrita Narlikar highlights Delhi as “host to the Voice of the Global South Summit”, where conversations were “serious, solution-oriented”. She argues that moving past a narrow, technocratic WTO lens brings “national security, development, and ethics” into policy.

The G20 presidency and the African Union

• India’s G20 presidency in 2023 was a historic milestone; the manner in which India led it reflected its soft power and its commitment to global cooperation.
• The African Union became a permanent member of the G20 under India’s Presidency in September 2023, embedding Africa’s voice in global governance. Nilimesh Baruah stresses that the AU’s entry marked a decisive shift towards an inclusive agenda that amplifies the Global South’s voice, and proposes an Illicit Financial Flows coalition “on equal footing” to drive financing reform.
• India also advocates Africa’s representation in the UN Security Council, in line with the Ezulwini Consensus.

Development instruments

• Lines of credit → concessional finance exceeding 300 lines of credit worth about US$32 billion worldwide, with over 200 lines of credit worth about US$12 billion across 42 African countries, backing rail, power, water, ICT and industrial parks such as the Mahatma Gandhi IT & Biotechnology Park in Côte d’Ivoire.
• Preferential market access → Duty-Free Tariff Preferences for LDCs. Climate and technology coalitions → the International Solar Alliance, Mission LiFE and the Global Biofuels Alliance.
• Development partnerships in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia emphasise capacity-building, technology transfer and inclusive growth, offering an alternative to traditional aid frameworks.
• Economic engagement → trade with Africa grew from $5 billion in 2001 to $90 billion in 2020, making India Africa’s third-largest trading partner; trade with Latin America reached $50 billion, driven by oil imports and exports of pharmaceuticals, engineering goods and automobiles.

Limits of coalition-building

• Amrita Narlikar: the Global South’s “collective agenda… remains a reform (and often more than that: a reboot) of global governance institutions… and a more equitable distribution of global resources.”
• Emma Mawdsley observes the rise of South–South Cooperation platforms: “New institutions and summits — IBSA, the BRICS, FOCAC, the IAFS — were stages for high profile pageantry and promises.” She points to cooperation narratives becoming increasingly “muscular”, nationalistic and pragmatic, with difficulties sustaining non-interference and a further erosion of ideational and operational distinctiveness.
• Ian Taylor cautions that as India rises, “its interest in South–South solidarity declines”, and old strategies cannot be carelessly abandoned. Analysis of Latin America likewise finds the political interface largely dominated by BRICS and IBSA, which risks thin outreach beyond Brazil.
• Outcomes therefore depend on addressing G77 internal disagreements and converting summit consensus into institutional change in the international financial institutions and UN processes.

Conclusion

• India cannot match China’s financial depth. Its comparative advantage is democratic, institutional and human — the sharing of electoral, federal, judicial and administrative experience, along with strengths in IT, pharmaceuticals and training that no competitor can replicate quickly.
• The multilateral track remains the highest-value arena. The African Union’s entry into the G20, the TRIPS waiver campaign, and the demand for reform of the international financial architecture show what coalition diplomacy can achieve.

As India rises, “its interest in South–South solidarity declines”, and “old strategies… cannot be carelessly abandoned.”

Ian Taylor

India’s role in establishing the NIEO

• As a founder of NAM and a leading voice in the G-77, India aligned with the Third World project of correcting global economic imbalance and reshaping the Bretton Woods system’s structural bias.
• At the 1973 Algiers NAM Summit, Indira Gandhi stressed that political independence remained incomplete without economic independence, tying the NIEO to the aspirations of newly liberated nations. Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom) read India’s support for the NIEO as part of a wider development concern to reduce dependence on the First World.
• Samir Amin (Unequal Development) recognised India’s advocacy of progressive measures — stabilising commodity prices, enabling technology transfer — alongside its diplomacy at UNCTAD.
• India’s Foreign Minister Swaran Singh, at the Sixth Special Session, proposed the revaluation of raw-material prices, additional liquidity for affected countries, equitable voting rights in the IMF, and external capital and technical assistance for developing countries.
• India helped amend GATT rules to allow import restrictions by developing countries, was central to founding UNCTAD, embedded its Panchsheel principles in the Bandung declaration, and today advances NIEO-like aims through BRICS, IBSA, RIC and G4.

The NIEO as a political project

• Not only an economic-legal package but a political effort to realign international power in the wake of decolonisation.
• Through the G-77, it advanced the claim that the “developing nations” formed a coherent political group, bound by a shared history of resistance to colonialism and imperialism.

India and the WTO

Since 1995 the WTO has been the forum where India advances trade and development goals against larger economies. Amrita Narlikar points to India’s role as a Global South leader on agricultural subsidies and public stockholding.

Food security — the core fight

• India seeks a permanent solution to protect procurement at Minimum Support Price for over 800 million beneficiaries, having secured its programmes through the Bali Package (2013).
• It refuses to dismantle its amber-box support — arguing, with Stiglitz and Rodrik, that developing countries need policy space within the rules.

India’s positions across the agenda

• Opposes a China-led investment-facilitation pact as outside the WTO’s mandate.
• Presses a CBDR line on fisheries.
• Seeks to end the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions.
• Resists trade linkage with labour and the environment — preferring the ILO, and objecting to the EU’s carbon border tax and deforestation rules.
• Co-sponsored a dispute-settlement reform proposal with the EU; opposed a 2018 US move to bar “defaulters” from presiding over WTO bodies.
• Defends the body’s consensus-driven character, calling it an “engine for global trade.”

The New International Economic Order

Championed by India in the 1970s and proposed at Algiers (1973) → to address the poverty of developing countries and bridge the North–South gap through fair trade, technology transfer and financial assistance.

Restructuring the economic order · Control over natural resources · Regulation of MNCs · Producer associations on the OPEC model

• Main tenets → total restructuring of the economic order; control over natural resources; regulation of MNCs operating in member territories; freedom to form producer associations like OPEC without economic or military resistance.
• Aims → challenge neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism, curb the negative role of MNCs, and rebuild world economic relations on self-reliance and equality.
• Challenges → stiff opposition from industrialized states, who held the existing system adequate; members’ lack of economic and military power; the insecurity dilemma among post-colonial societies; divisions among developing states; and failure to use oil as an economic weapon.
• Outcome → no significant economic justice achieved, but the North–South question was established as central to world politics.

India as a Leader of the Global South

• Reformed multilateralism → S. Jaishankar (The India Way) on reforming the WTO, the IMF, the World Bank and the UN to address the “democratic deficit” (Joseph Stiglitz).
• Climate justice → CBDR; the International Solar Alliance.
• South–South cooperation → the G20 presidency and the inclusion of the African Union.
• Alternative institutions → BRICS as an option beyond Western-led bodies.
• Global public goods → Digital Public Infrastructure — UPI shared with African states.
• The line to take → a neoliberal order marginalises the South; India consolidates leadership through equitable representation, climate justice and South–South cooperation.