The IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) trilateral cooperation mechanism is still evolving and yet to acquire an identity of its own. The advantages of the three countries coming together, sharing similar developmental experiences and each emerging as a force to reckon within at the international level can hardly be overemphasised.

Moreover, the kind of interaction that is desirable among the three countries hardly exists. Probably that has more to do with the distances that separate the three countries from one another. The coming together of the three countries in the form the IBSA mechanism four years ago has helped each of the three countries to know the other better. Which is perhaps why, the second IBSA summit meeting in South Africa last week went on record expressing satisfaction over the interactions that have been possible among people, parliamentarians, experts, businessmen, etc from the three countries under the IBSA aegis.

But at the second summit, the leaders of the three countries also virtually recognised the desirability of the mechanism getting its own international identity. That is very much within the realm of possibilities. The three countries already have shared views on UN reforms. From shared views, they can move forward to full cooperation among them in promoting the UN reform agenda. Similarly, they share a commonality of views on most of the issues involved in the Doha round of WTO negotiations. In a sense, IBSA can do to the developing countries as a whole what the mechanism of G-20 could not effectively achieve so far. At the last week’s summit, the three countries also showed considerable interest in evolving a social development strategy for IBSA.
While each of these countries can share its experiences on good governance practices vis-à-vis social developmental strategy and come up with a model strategy, at a practical plane IBSA’s utility for each of the participating countries would, all said and done, depend on their ability to support each other in multi-lateral organisations. That cooperation is rather limited at present, though the scope for it is immense. Equally important is also bilateral trade and economic cooperation. The IBSA project will not make progress without strong business linkages. The leaders of the three countries are, however, aware of the need to give economic content to the IBSA process.