As Costa Rica joins OECD, New Delhi must improve ties with San José

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When India decided on the penultimate day of 2020 to expand its diplomatic footprint in the western hemisphere, it missed the jewel in the crown in that region: Costa Rica.

On May 25, the entire world was fawning on Costa Rica after the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), popularly known as the ‘rich men’s club’, admitted this Latin American country as its 38th member. Costa Rica is only the fourth Latin American nation to meet the OECD’s rigorous standards of membership in terms of democracy, market economy, level of development and a host of other yardsticks.

Within minutes of the OECD announcement admitting Costa Rica into the ‘club’, the United States issued a statement describing it as “a strong signal of confidence in the Costa Rican economy. Costa Rica’s accession comes at a timely moment in OECD history”. Twenty-four hours later, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced plans to visit San José, Costa Rica’s capital, to meet President Carlos Alvarado Quesada arguing that “Costa Rica…is important to key US goals in the region...”

The Joe Biden administration plans to make Costa Rica the lynchpin of its geo-strategy for Latin America. For two decades, the rise of Left and socialist leaders in Latin America, most of them charismatic, with sensitivities to the heartbeat of Hispanic identity, had caused sleepless nights in Langley, the CIA headquarters. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela had all made a populist, radical lurch in Latin America.

Costa Rica is finally offering an alternative model for the region that integrates populism, and welfarism into laissez-faire and democratic values. Blinken is hoping that this model will be embraced by countries in the region which lurched to the Left, then dangerously to the Right when Socialism failed or unacceptably suppressed the popular will when failed regimes faced the wrath of their people.

Blinken used his visit to San José to collectively and separately meet ‘senior leaders’ of the Central America Integration System (SICA), who were also in San José to celebrate Costa Rica’s OECD membership. Those he met included Blinken’s counterparts from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Mexico and even Nicaragua, which had earlier become a bête noire for Washington.

Biden is desperate to stem a new influx of illegal immigration from some of these countries. The SICA, whose observers include major powers such as Japan and South Korea from Asia, but not India, can be expected to be a key to regional integration, promoted by the new US administration. Costa Rica will be the model for the promotion of such regional co-operation.

The Costa Rican model, which got the country into the OECD, ought to engage the Narendra Modi government’s attention when it is struggling to stitch together a cogent healthcare response to the COVID-19 second wave and meet welfare challenges, including in education. Costa Rica has the best healthcare system in Latin America, with the exception of Cuba in the Caribbean: its public clinics are similar to those in developed countries and treatment is free for citizens. Drinking water is potable and readily available even in remote corners. Modi’s Jal Jeevan Mission, which aims to provide household tap connections everywhere in India by 2024, could learn from Costa Rica’s experience of how this was achieved.

When Costa Rica’s economy shrank by 4.5 percent last year, mainly because tourists stopped arriving by planeloads during the pandemic, Alvarado quickly approached the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which obliged in January with a loan of $1.8 billon. The country did not need billions in any IMF bailout, just about the equivalent of the shrinkage in GDP. Costa Rica’s government schools are sought after because of the quality of instruction they provide: government teachers are paid twice in salary that their counterparts in private schools.

Non-resident Indians (NRIs) from the US and Canada were a major source of tourism until COVID-19 halted such inflow of people with money to spend in well-maintained national parks, eco-tourist facilities and along the unspoilt coastline. One reason for the inflow of NRIs was that they do not need visas if a US or Canadian visa is stamped on Indian passports.

It is difficult to fathom why Costa Rica was left out when Modi’s Cabinet approved the setting up of new embassies in Paraguay and the Dominican Republic. In the absence of a resident Ambassador in San José, the Indian Embassy in Panama looks after New Delhi’s interests in Costa Rica with a concurrent accreditation that falls short of realising the potential of bilateral relations. Costa Rica, unlike India, opened its mission in New Delhi in 2010.

The absence of Indian representation in San José has inhibited people-to-people contacts which provide the oxygen for relations with other Hispanic countries. Compounding this is one of the lowest Indian community presence anywhere in the world: there are only 600 Indians in all of Costa Rica. Because of such cultural unfamiliarity with each other, Alvarado had to issue a presidential decree in October 2018 declaring all activities and initiatives related to promotion of yoga and meditation to be in public interest.

Thoughtfully, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu chose Costa Rica two years ago for one of his foreign visits. It has been the only high-level visit from India to San José in 74 years. It is a symbol of gender equality in Costa Rica that with the exception of Alvarado, all of Naidu’s meetings were with women leaders, including the First Vice President and President of the Congress (Parliament).