| Summary/Abstract |
Capabilities in space technology are turning into a corner stone of emergence of developing countries such as India and China. In a string of agreements for cooperation in outer space, India has developed several cooperation mechanisms with international partners to harness the benefits of space technology for mutual benefits. India has recently signed a multitude of cooperative agreements in outer space and these instruments of cooperation have advanced the space based capabilities and have mutually benefitted the partners. In one such recent engagement, India has signed a bilateral cooperation Memorandum of Understanding with Brazil in the implementation of an arrangement establishing cooperation in the augmentation of a Brazilian Earth station for receiving and processing the data from Indian Remote Sensing satellite. The agreement has been based on the interest of Brazil to receive the Resourcesat-2 data for natural resources management, but not limited to it. In the backdrop of the agreement between India and Brazil, the present work presents an analysis of the state of capacities for these countries and an overview of policy implications for India. In a foreign policy perspective, the Indo-Brazil agreement has been timed at a stage when the Sino-Brazil cooperation is faced with a challenge of recent failure and is set to provide India a push into a better South–South cooperation. The agreement has provided India an added location to downlink its satellite data and may well lay a foundation for future cooperation with other Latin American States and for further global strengthening of ties in forums such as the IBSA.
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