Beyond bullet train: Will India gift Japan's Abe the diamond of his dream?

For over a decade, Japan PM Shinzo Abe has been courting India to join his proposed 'security diamond' quad for countering China's might in the Asia-Pacific waters

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s India visit earlier this month would be remembered, among other things, for the launch of the ambitious bullet train project. While the visit showed his commitment to his country’s ties with India, it also highlighted India’s significance, notably, in another of his key commitments – building a counterweight to China’s rising might in the Asia-Pacific waters, an exercise he began more than a decade ago. 

In 2007, during one of his visits to India, Abe had courted New Delhi to form a coalition of democracies securing ‘broader Asia’ – a geographic and economic construct that