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Sunday, December 17, 2006

WARM ties from COLD Japan

Indian PM Dr. Manmohan Singh's visit to Japan is being termed has highly successful one in economic ties with the country while a moderately successful one in regards to Indo-US nuclear deal.

Japan has committed to create a state of art freight corridor between Mumbai and Delhi but with a caveat that the same will be majorly used by Japanese companies setting up shop in India. They feel that Indian infrastructure is not so good to support their industries, so they want to build their own infrastructure in the country. In a way it is good as this will set a benchmark in the quality and all the other infrastructure being built in the country would try match its standards. Japan has also committed a FII investments of about $ 10 billion while FDI of around $ 2 billion is expected.
Japan has being non-committal to Indian nuclear deal with US and has adopted the policy if wait-n-watch. Japan has kept same kind of attitude towards Indian in nulcear matters since nuclear test at Pokhran in May 1998.

The moot question is why Japan on one hand is very co-operative with India in economic matters while has taken defensive stance in matters concerning Nuclear diplomacy? That too in the period when Japan itself has for the first time in its history after world war II created defence ministry. It is period when it has also not shied away from accepting the fact they do possess the technology to produce nuclear weapons but have also mentioned their intentions of not doing so.

My Analysis:

US always had the policy of using one country against the other to achieve its goals. Lately it has tried to influence China with all sorts of things. It also tried to use Taiwan against China but soon realised that tiny Taiwan is no match for formidable China. It then has pursued that goals by bringing in India into the picture. It also wants to rein in India's global aspirations and tame them for their own interests. Hence it has started showering India with goodies like nuclear deal and offer for various military equipment like AWACS and Fighter planes.
In the aftermath of Nuclear tests at Pokhran in May 1998, Japan ineffectively used the policy of sanctions. Indian economy has found to be resilient to global shocks. This has lead Japan rethink its policy towards India. They now want to ride the wave of reforms in India and also want to have influence over India. Hence, they are entering into rapidly growing Indian economy thereby creating a potential influence over our decision making and also reaping the benefits of growing economy.

India should awaken to the risks of getting into deals with countries like Japan. I am not saying that it should not enter into such deals. Rather, it should take the benefit of its grwoing clout inthe international arena but also create checks and balances to negate the ensuing risks in such kind of deals
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