Brazil’s man of the moment

It is not hyperbole to suggest that the triumph of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s presidential election last week ought to be a celebratory moment for the Indian people. Those Indians, for whom Lula is an unintended benefactor, are not aware that he was the good Samaritan halfway across the globe who improved their welfare in the last two decades. But India’s leaders across the political spectrum are conscious that Lula was the inspiration for some of India’s extensive welfare programmes.

India’s leaders across the political spectrum are aware that Lula’s schemes have inspired some of the country’s extensive welfare programmes.

It was in acknowledgement of this that PM Modi broke protocol and convention last week and congratulated Lula’s return to Brazil’s political centre stage even before the presidential election results were conclusive. Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court had only said the country’s presidential election was ‘mathematically defined’ with 98.8% of the votes counted, when Modi tweeted: ‘I look forward to working closely together (with Lula) to further deepen and widen our bilateral relations, as also our cooperation on global issues.’ At that point, outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro’s campaign team had not given up hopes of their victory since the vote difference between rival candidates was just over 1% of the votes counted. So far, Bolsonaro has not conceded the election.

The Delhi Government’s ‘Samajik Suvidha Sangam’ (‘Mission Convergence’ in English) is modelled on Lula’s innovative conditional cash transfer programme — Bolsa Familia — which benefited 45 million poor Brazilians; it was launched in 2003, a year after Lula became President for the first time. It was then the largest such programme in the world, and it immediately reduced the number of people living below the poverty line in Brazil from 28.2% to 22.3%. Lula was elected President in 2002 with 61% support. Because of Bolsa Familia and other such poverty elimination schemes, Lula’s popularity rating was 73% when he left office after eight years.

Delhi’s Mission Convergence was envisioned to converge a duplicity of welfare schemes with the objective of reaching entitlements to the poor through a single-window system and avoiding leakages. Delhi’s senior officials were not the only ones to have travelled to Brazil during Lula’s presidency to study his welfare schemes and replicate them at home. Kerala’s Left Front government, too, sent its ministers and officials in the hope of improving the state’s matrix of social safety nets. Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal also did some exploratory work. Subsequently, when Modi became PM and overhauled existing welfare programmes, adding several new ones, inputs were extensively taken from Lula’s models. By then, some of his schemes had attracted fans worldwide.

Global ratings on hunger have recently been the subject of heated debates and controversies in India. Brazil, on the other hand, has graduated out of the UN Hunger Map because of Bolsa Familia and another of Lula’s welfare schemes, Fome Zero, the right of access to basic food. India’s National Food Security Act of 2013 has elements from Fome Zero.

At least 20 countries, such as Chile and Mexico regionally, and faraway Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Morocco, have copied and implemented their national versions of Lula’s anti-poverty programmes. Bolsa Familia received huge publicity when New York’s city government announced ‘Opportunity NYC’, a conditional cash transfer programme for poor New Yorkers, similar to the Brazilian effort. Eventually, the World Bank adopted Bolsa Familia and Fome Zero as models to be incorporated in its poverty alleviation efforts. Lula made benefits conditional for beneficiaries: children had to be sent to school, they had to be vaccinated, and so on. In some Indian states, conditions have been attempted to be attached, but weakly and ineffectively.

When Bolsonaro became President, he did not expand human development schemes and did not further invest in social growth efforts. But it is to his credit that he did not scrap schemes on which poor Brazilians were dependent. If the loser last week received only marginally less votes than Lula, it was not entirely because of his appeal to fanatic right-wing forces in their South American avatar. Bolsonaro’s support also came from the favela – Brazilian name for slums – where the poorest of poor continued to receive sustenance from such schemes, never mind which President launched those.

Brazil is now a deeply divided country. If Lula fails to heal the wounds left behind by four years of Bolsonaro’s arbitrary rule and unite Brazilians once again, their country cannot realise its immense potential. Ties with India will also remain on a plateau, though they are unlikely to get worse because there are no outstanding problems. That was what happened when Lula was succeeded by Dilma Rousseff as President 11 years ago. Like today, Brazil became caught in domestic political divisions and Rousseff was impeached. Vice-President Michel Temer succeeded her, but he had no time for India.

India’s invitation to Bolsonaro as the chief guest for the Republic Day in 2020 was an attempt by both sides to retrieve lost ground. If Covid had not disrupted Brazil severely, there may have been a turnaround in bilateral engagement. The President won the hearts of Indians by referring to an emergency supply of two million doses of Pune-manufactured vaccines last year as ‘sanjeevani booti’. But the vaccine relationship cast a shadow because of allegations of poor hygiene and lack of quality control at another Indian manufacturing facility in the previous year, leading to suspension of supplies.

Two years after Lula demitted office, India appropriately honoured him with the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development. Who can be more deserving of this award for development!