Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who's on a two-day state visit to India, is holding a summit meeting with his Indian counterpart today and reports indicate that he may offer India a whopping $42 billion (5 trillion yen) in investment over a five-year period.
The visit is likely to cement the ties between Indian PM Narendra Modi and the Japanese PM Kishida, whose first visit to India after taking charge last year marks a new beginning. But the two-day summit is likely to focus more on the strategic agenda at a time when the Ukraine war is pushing the world to the brink of a tense global situation.
"Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine coincides with this trip, I'd like to emphasise the importance of international unity," said Kishida before leaving for India. Japan has already condemned and imposed sanctions on Russia while India chose not to condemn the Russian attack owing to its close ties with Moscow.
Though the visit was planned long before the Ukrainian tensions surfaced, Japan and India had one common factor to be strategically close to each other and that remains the omnipresent giant -- China -- in their neighbourhood. Since India and China are on the Russian side, it poses a new dilemma for Tokyo to ponder and address, preferably in today's summit meeting as well.
Secondly, to be precise, India is keen to see Japanese investments multiply but this has remained elusive since the days of Nakasone in the 1980s, despite the close proximity enjoyed by all Indian Prime Ministers with their Japanese counterparts. In the last three decades, India and Japan have seen progress in strategic relations but lacked an in-depth economic interdependency model that preceded Japan's foray into China.
Despite bullet trains and power transmission plants in India, Japan's economic investments remained ignorant of the manufacturing sector or harnessing IT potential in the South Asian nation. The professed withdrawal of Japanese investments in China amid the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 had raised several hopes in India for a possible diversion of Japan ODIs but not a trickle of it flowed through.
From the 2014 offer of former Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to invest a 3.5 trillion yen in investment over five years to the current Fumio Kishida's offer of 5 trillion yen over the next five years, India can expect a massive expansion of bullet trains from Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector to other key regions including the Chennai-Bengaluru corridor, besides several infrastructural projects already underway.
But the final post remains Japan's wavering investments in India compared to other countries. Unless this is understood and answered, India remains a recipient of Japan's aid-linked projects as ever.
