New Delhi and Tokyo need a daily direct flight between the two Capitals as a first step towards realising the grandiose “Vision for India-Japan Strategic and Global Partnership in the Next Decade”! Jointly adopted by the two governments on the occasion of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Japan, the vision statement is a comprehensive and wide-ranging statement of shared interests and shared values. If this vision statement does indeed shape the course of the bilateral relationship, then Japan will emerge as India’s most important partner country in Asia. However, for this wide-ranging vision to become reality, both countries must do more with each other and together than has been on offer and in evidence in the past decade when a lot of nice words have been uttered but very little action has been forthcoming on the ground.
Japan has remained so inward-oriented — politically disoriented at home, punching way below its weight and psyched out by China’s relentless rise — that it has shown little enthusiasm in practice for the so-called “strategic and global partnership” with India, beyond giving India more aid than to any other country. Japanese companies have been slow to respond to opportunities in India and Japanese governments have rarely invested time and effort in trying to understand India’s concerns, needs, fears and hopes. India has had more Japanese study teams analysing what is wrong and explaining how difficult it is to do business in India than business delegations exploring new opportunities. In the past six years, a new prime minister in Japan almost every year has had his own priorities in which India has not always figured prominently. From the emotionally charged warmth of Shinzo Abe to the disinterested coolness of Yasuo Fukuda, official interest in India has waxed and waned. Hopefully, this yo-yo relationship will stabilise into a more steady and long-term partnership after this visit of Dr Singh.
Thus, the wide-ranging vision statement needs to be immediately translated into action on the ground so that the legacy of a relationship below its potential is overcome and the two Asian nations can work together to fuel each other’s growth. Given the contrasting factor endowments of Asia’s most technologically sophisticated and industrially developed nation and a populous democracy like India, with a rising middle class, a dynamic entrepreneurial class and a growing working class, the prospects for partnership between the two countries are enormous. Hopefully, Dr Singh’s visit will further accelerate the bilateral engagement between the two.