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After visiting India's immediate neighbours Bhutan and Nepal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a five-day visit to Japan starting Saturday.
Modi visited Russia, China and Japan several times during his years as the chief minister of Gujarat, when most governments in the West refused to engage with him.
That effort, along with his image of a strong nationalist leader, is winning Modi support of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Both these leaders have an image of being nationalists. Even Chinese President Xi Jinping, who like Modi, tom-toms national economic revival, has reached out to the Indian PM in a manner that he seldom did with his predecessor Manmohan Singh.
This meeting of minds is not only shaping Modi's equation with some of the world's most powerful leaders, but also helping define his government's foreign policy. Modi, over the next few months, will have an opportunity to build on the rapport with Abe, Putin and Xi.
The Japan visit, as Modi stressed in his departure statement issued on Friday, will be his first bilateral visit outside India's immediate neighbourhood. He said this underlined "the high priority Japan receives in our (India's) foreign and economic policies." Modi further said the gesture was "also a reflection of Japan's paramount importance in my vision for development and prosperity in India and in peace, stability and prosperity in Asia at large".
It will also be his first meeting with Abe. The Japanese PM, in a departure from protocol, will travel to Kyoto to meet the Indian PM. Observers of India-Japan relations predict that the visit could lead to sweeping changes in bilateral ties. Both Modi and Abe, after their Twitter exchanges on Thursday, have helped heighten expectations. Modi surprised many by tweeting in Japanese to which Abe replied. Famously, Modi's is just one of the three Twitter accounts that Abe follows on the micro-blogging site.
However, in a fine balancing act between Tokyo and Beijing, the Modi government will host China's Xi within a fortnight of the Indian PM's return from Tokyo. It will be Xi's first visit to India. Modi would also be hosting Putin in December. In Brazil, where the two met on the sidelines of Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in mid-July, Modi urged Putin to break his usual practice of spending just a day in India.
The Japan visit is expected to yield close India-Japan economic and defence ties. Cooperation in rare earth mining, more Japanese investment in India's infrastructure like building '100 smart cities' and high speed railways are expected. The two sides are likely to agree to push the ambitious Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project. However, the visit is unlikely to deliver the much anticipated nuclear cooperation agreement, with officials from the two sides still grappling with bridging the gap.
Modi's Japan visit will be high on atmospherics. "It will involve grandstanding that India and Japan stand together as responsible powers working for future peace and prosperity of Asia," says former diplomat Hemant Krishna Singh. A former Ambassador of India to Japan, Singh expects a "comprehensive, broad, sweeping" transformation in India-Japan economic ties, including Tokyo assuring all help in making India a manufacturing hub and also announcing a substantially new package of assistance. "My hope is that the two sides will also seize the opportunity in the defence sector by inking an umbrella pact on defence cooperation," he said.
India and Japan, led by their two nationalist leaders, are expected to broach issues of the changing balance of power in Asia. Singh says India and Japan would continue working towards shaping "overarching peaceful security architecture in Asia based on economic cooperation" but in the context of wider multi-polarity, instead of American hegemony being replaced by that of China.
The visit is likely to be keenly watched by both Moscow and Beijing. Modi has already met Putin and China's Xi on the sidelines of the Brics Summit in Brazil in July, meetings where the Indian PM struck a quick rapport with the two leaders by pointing out how he visited the two countries as the CM.
According to a Chinese foreign ministry statement, Modi, at his meeting with Chinese President Xi in Brazil on July 14, thanked him for sending his special envoy to New Delhi, as it symbolised the great importance China attaches to developing the bilateral relations with India and his government. Modi said he paid a number of visits to China during his term as CM. "The two nations are actually one mind with two bodies," Modi told Xi, adding that the new Indian government was more committed to economic progress, and hopes to learn from China's successful experience. Achieving what he terms as the 'Chinese Dream' has been a major plank of Xi's presidency.
A couple of days later, Modi charmed Putin. The Russian President, according to a press release on his official website, told Modi at their meeting in Brazil: "We know that you are a great friend of our country and have already visited Russia on several occasions."
Modi, speaking extempore, impressed the Russian delegation enormously. He thanked Putin for his congratulatory phone call on BJP's electoral victory. "If you ask anyone among the more than one billion people living in India who is our country's greatest friend, every person, every child knows that it is Russia. Everyone knows that Russia has always stood side by side with India during the toughest moments and without demanding anything in return," Modi said. He invited Putin to visit not just New Delhi in December but also other cities, including "our joint project" the Kudankulam nuclear power plant.
Modi told the Russian president that he visited Moscow as the CM of Gujarat, and also organised relations between Astrakhan and Gujarat. "We in Gujarat have the feeling that Astrakhan is very close to us," Modi said.
As for his visit to Japan, Modi said people of India "draw inspiration from Japan's vanguard role as the fountainhead of Asia's modernisation, resurgence and rejuvenation." Modi said he hoped to discuss with Abe the roadmap for "our global and strategic partnership in the years ahead". The PM said he will explore how Japan can contribute to "transformation of India's manufacturing, infrastructure sectors, energy and social sectors". He said the two sides will "discuss how to boost our defence and security cooperation, including in defence technology, equipment and industry."
The PM, in a reference to DMIC and other incomplete projects, said he will "try to accelerate progress on the unfinished agenda of projects and initiatives that our two countries have embarked upon." For all the feel-good messages Modi and Abe have exchanged, making rapid progress on that unfinished agenda will be the true litmus test.
