The Abe-Modi connect

India-Japan ties have got a boost from the personal camaraderie between the two prime ministers

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be in India on a three-day visit starting Friday to take part in the ninth annual India-Japan summit talks with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. Both leaders will be evaluating the state of their special strategic and global partnership as well as reviewing the implementation of various decisions taken over the past year on the economic and trade front.
Reciprocating Abe’s gesture of accompanying Modi during his visit to Kyoto in September last year, Modi will be with Abe when the Japanese prime minister goes to Varanasi. During Modi’s visit last year, Japan had announced doubling of its private and public investment in India to about $34 billion over a period of five years. The two leaders would want to ensure the momentum in economic ties is maintained.
There is also an expectation that India and Japan will finalize a pact to jointly produce US-2 search and rescue amphibious military aircraft during Abe’s visit, in what could be the first defence deal between the two countries. In line with the Modi government’s Make in India initiative, a broader defence agreement underpinning joint development of weapon systems is also in the offing.
The much-awaited nuclear deal between the two nations remains a work in progress and there may be some concrete outcome this time. Japan’s most powerful business lobby, Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), submitted a proposal last month calling the government for signing the treaty. Though there has been significant movement on these issues over the past year, these initiatives still remain highly contested between the bureaucracies of the two nations.
What is most likely going to be the big announcement during the visit is the Indian decision to adopt Japanese bullet train technology for its first high-speed rail corridor. This 505km corridor linking Mumbai with Ahmedabad will be financed by a Japanese loan at just 0.5% rate of interest. This is significant for both Japan and India. Earlier this year, Japan had lost out to China in bidding to build a high-speed railway in Indonesia. And India has been concerned about China’s growing role in infrastructure development in South Asia over the past decade.
The relationship between India and Japan is perhaps the best it has ever been, largely because both have prime ministers who look at the region and the world in very similar terms. India-Japan ties have got a boost from the personal camaraderie between Abe and Modi. Both leaders are emblematic of a new, ambitious and nationalistic Asian landscape. They have decisive mandates to reshape the economic and strategic future of their respective nations.
Modi has underlined that India and Japan share a “fundamental identity of values, interests and priorities”. Japan’s economic and technological development has inspired Modi to emulate the Japan model, with flexible and bold fiscal policy that encourages private investment in infrastructure and technology. Abe, a longstanding admirer of India, has been a strong votary of strategic ties between New Delhi and Tokyo.
For Abe, “a strong India is in the best interest of Japan, and a strong Japan is in the best interest of India”. He was one of the first Asian leaders to envision a “broader Asia”, linking the Pacific and Indian Oceans to form the Indo-Pacific. He has gone about reconstituting Japan’s role as a security provider in the region and beyond. India, more than all Japan’s neighbours, seems willing to acknowledge Tokyo’s centrality in shaping the evolving security architecture in the Indo-Pacific.
The US is playing a significant role in bringing India and Japan closer as well. The three nations had their first trilateral meeting at the foreign ministerial level earlier this year in September. This was followed up by the six-day Malabar 2015 naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal in October, which reflected the priorities of the three nations and a convergence of India’s Act East policy, Japan’s growing focus on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and the Obama administration’s strategic rebalance towards the Indo-Pacific.
Other trilateral configurations are also emerging with Japan, Australia and India interacting at a regional level. There is a growing convergence in the region now that the strategic framework of the Indo-Pacific remains the best way forward to manage the rapidly shifting contours of Asia. Proposed first by Japan and adopted with enthusiasm by Australia, in particular, the framework has gained considerable currency, with even the US now increasingly articulating the need for it. Though China views the framework with suspicion, many in China are acknowledging that the Indo-Pacific has emerged as a critical regional space for India, and China needs to synchronize its policies across the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific.
These developments underscore the changing regional configuration in the Indo-Pacific on account of China’s aggressive foreign policy posture as well as a new seriousness in India’s own China policy.
The Indian prime minister’s outreach to Japan has been a significant part of his government’s foreign policy so far as strong security ties with Tokyo are now viewed as vital by
New Delhi. Abe’s visit will further reinforce these trends and if nurtured seriously, can pay great dividends to both India and Japan.