IndIa, Japan embark on hIstorIc path of collaboratIve success

India and Japan, to safeguard the rule of law and potential oil and gas and minerals exploration in the South China Sea or East China Sea in international waters or in off-shore areas of friendly nations like Vietnam, amid the relative scaling down of US military forces with respect to Japan.

The Indian armed forces, among the world’s largest, can likely provide a costeffective option given the mutual interests between Japan and India. In a sign of continuously upgrading ties, India has also participated in joint naval and anti-terror training exercises, and sent a 35-member military marching band that took part in a Japan Self Defence Forces ( JSDF) annual marching festival event this year, and it is important to remember that India sent its National Disaster Response Force to help after the tsunami and earthquake in Onagawa, Japan, whose service we honoured in a New Delhi function with the leadership of India’s National Disaster Management Authority.

Despite India’s need to focus on development, it is forced to acquire military hardware; however that is not inimical to its quest for peace. Similarly, Japan’s great desire (also PM Abe’s own cherished goal) to become a normal nation 71 years after the end of World War II is entirely understandable. Some Japanese lament that it lost the War, and therefore has to be less than a normal country. However, this columnist has often pointed out that there is no nation on Earth that has not lost a war. Both Prime Ministers Modi and Abe, acknowledged supremely self-assured, confident and decisive leaders, have nonetheless been overreliant on bureaucracies in both countries. Until there can be broad-based innovation from small and medium companies and startups, especially IT-related, there is unlikely to be anything more than incremental change. When that happens, as it was in the early 1900s, history is very likely to repeat with India and Japan enjoying a new Spring of collaborative success. (Dr. Sunil Chacko, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities and the Trivandrum Medical College, has been a faculty member in the US, Canada, Japan and India, and has advised on the MaharashtraWakayama MoU partnership. The views are personal.)