Help of the Rising Sun

The Japanese have an understated way of going about things, which is why few in India have understood the magnitude of what New Delhi and Tokyo are attempting to accomplish in their bilateral relationship.

The Japanese have an understated way of going about things, which is why few in India have understood the magnitude of what New Delhi and Tokyo are attempting to accomplish in their bilateral relationship. While there has been an unsurprising interest in the visiting Japanese Prime Minister’s equally unsurprising call for India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, there should be greater public appreciation of such projects as the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor and the parallel hi-tech rail freight corridor. The industrial corridor, a $90 billion-infrastructure project, that would add a quarter to India’s industrial infrastructure, would be as transformative as the Indo-US civil nuclear deal or the Green Revolution. Yukio Hatoyama’s public endorsement of these industrial projects will come as a relief to New Delhi which had been uncertain whether the new left-of-centre coalition in Tokyo was as committed to them as its more conservative predecessors.

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This uncertainty arises from an understanding of the initial motivations behind Japan’s interest in these projects. The original policy was driven by strategic concerns that Japan had become economically dependent on China, a country that had indicated its desire to supplant Japan economically and politically in Asia. Japanese manufacturers, however, found India a hostile environment because of the country’s poor infrastructure. The solution, therefore, was for Japan to build the infrastructure itself. Hence the two corridor projects. Mr Hatoyama’s government has come in with a different geopolitical vision, one where Japan and China bury their differences in a larger Asian architecture. Yet his government has renewed Tokyo’s commitment to the corridors. The evidence is that this is being driven by an acceptance that while strategic concerns may have been downgraded, the economic arguments for Japan to help develop India are now stronger than ever. India supplanted China last fiscal year as the number one destination for Japanese foreign direct investment.

Mr Hatoyama’s visit was thin on substance, reflecting the fact his government has been in power for less than four months. What is important is that the visit, squeezed in before the New Year began, showed a continuity of policy regarding India that may well make Japan one of the key guarantors of the rise of this country in the coming century.