In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di’s two-day vis­it to T&T, on the sec­ond leg of his five-na­tion Glob­al South tour, is sig­nif­i­cant not on­ly from a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive but al­so be­cause it sets the stage for deep­er lev­els of en­gage­ment be­tween the two na­tions.

This was the first bi­lat­er­al vis­it by an In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter to Trinidad and To­ba­go since 1999. Prime Min­is­ter Mo­di, who ar­rived in T&T from Ghana, went on to Ar­genti­na and will next head to Brazil for the BRICS Sum­mit be­fore his fi­nal stop in Namib­ia, on a tour that re­in­forces In­dia’s com­mit­ment to the Glob­al South agen­da.

His vis­it to T&T was a valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ty for sus­tained peo­ple-to-peo­ple ex­changes, deep­er di­as­po­ra diplo­ma­cy, and ex­pand­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion in ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, and in­no­va­tion.

The packed itin­er­ary for the two-day vis­it in­clud­ed high-lev­el bi­lat­er­al talks with Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar cov­er­ing trade, re­new­able en­er­gy, health, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, IT, and dig­i­tal fi­nance.

Al­so of note were the many Mem­o­ran­da of Un­der­stand­ing fi­nalised for co­op­er­a­tion in ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, dis­as­ter re­silience, re­new­able en­er­gy, and dig­i­tal pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture. More than ever, T&T needs to pur­sue South-South co­op­er­a­tion — the ex­change of re­sources, tech­nol­o­gy, and knowl­edge among de­vel­op­ing coun­tries in the Glob­al South — to safe­guard against shift­ing geopo­lit­i­cal winds.

Forg­ing di­rect eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic ties in­de­pen­dent of tra­di­tion­al North-South chan­nels gives na­tions like ours op­por­tu­ni­ties to di­ver­si­fy mar­kets, en­hance re­silience, and am­pli­fy our col­lec­tive voic­es on glob­al is­sues.

This lev­el of en­gage­ment can span tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, trade, and pol­i­cy in­no­va­tion, en­abling the coun­tries of the Glob­al South to ad­dress com­mon de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges on their terms.

In re­cent decades, South-South trade has sur­passed North-South trade, ex­pand­ing from $600 bil­lion in 1995 to $5.3 tril­lion in 2021. This shift has built ro­bust eco­nom­ic cor­ri­dors that lessen de­pen­den­cy on tra­di­tion­al West­ern mar­kets.

South-South co­op­er­a­tion has moved far be­yond hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to in­clude large-scale tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance, trade, ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, and pol­i­cy in­no­va­tion. An ex­am­ple is In­dia’s South-South-sup­port­ed health in­sur­ance schemes in the Caribbean, which show­case prac­ti­cal knowl­edge ex­change for mu­tu­al ben­e­fit. This lev­el of co­op­er­a­tion can be har­nessed to mod­ernise T&T’s health­care sys­tem.

Long-stand­ing South-South schol­ar­ships and train­ing schemes through In­dia’s Tech­ni­cal and Eco­nom­ic Co­op­er­a­tion (ITEC) pro­gramme pro­vide train­ing to T&T na­tion­als in fields as di­verse as IT, re­new­able en­er­gy, and pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion.

This coun­try’s liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas and pe­tro­le­um ex­ports align nat­u­ral­ly with In­dia’s en­er­gy di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion needs, and un­der South-South frame­works, T&T can ne­go­ti­ate joint ven­tures for down­stream pro­cess­ing of petro­chem­i­cals; tech­nol­o­gy trans­fers in so­lar and wind pow­er de­vel­op­ment; and shared re­search and de­vel­op­ment on bio­fu­els and hy­dro­gen, draw­ing on both na­tions’ ex­per­tise.

In ad­di­tion, more ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion in South-South trade blocs such as BRICS+, IB­SA and ASEAN can broad­en ex­port mar­kets for agriprod­ucts, chem­i­cals, and ser­vices, and help this coun­try in­te­grate in­to re­gion­al man­u­fac­tur­ing and lo­gis­tics chains, among nu­mer­ous oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Now that the ex­cite­ment and pageantry of the of­fi­cial vis­it have died down, the fo­cus should shift to align­ing with oth­er na­tions in the Glob­al South to tack­le shared chal­lenges. This is the chance to un­lock cost-ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions to the prob­lems ham­per­ing T&T’s de­vel­op­ment.

South-South co­op­er­a­tion is a pow­er­ful force for build­ing a more in­clu­sive world or­der that bet­ter re­flects the as­pi­ra­tions of Glob­al South na­tions, and it is time for T&T to be ful­ly on board.