WHATEVER his other feats and failures, Narendra Modi can be a great host.
He never forgot that when, as Gujarat state’s chief minister, he was under an adverse international gaze after the 2002 sectarian violence, and Japan was the only major power that had welcomed him.
Now, as India’s prime minister, he returned the gesture on Sept 13 and 14. Although they had met thrice before, he received with aplomb Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and wife, Akie, dressing them up in Indian attire, and in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, the state capital, similarly dressed Deepavali-style.
Bunting and lights decorated the streets, and dancers and musicians performed all along an 8km route, where he rode with his guests in an open jeep instead of in bullet-proof cars.
Coinciding with Abe’s 67th birthday, the occasion was, of course, an encore in Modi’s “birthday diplomacy”.
He had similarly hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping on the latter’s birthday in 2014, benignly watching the first Chinese couple sit on a swing and smile.
Those smiles have since vanished amidst numerous India-China diplomatic irritants and a 73-day military face-off in the Himalayas.
The replacement of the Jinpings with the Abes is more than symbolic. Japan was the only major Asian power to support India during that crisis. Even without these misgivings with China, India has been wooing Japan for long.
A known Japan admirer, Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh, was in Tokyo twice. Modi is pursuing almost all of his cooperation proposals that have been under prolonged discussion.
Modi has, however, reversed India’s stand from Manmohan’s on the high-speed rail, popularly called Bullet Train.
Although coveted, it was downgraded to clinch Japan’s more urgently required and lasting infrastructure proposals.
Bullet appears to have caught the imagination of India’s urban middle-class. But critics are questioning the one trillion rupee (RM65 billion) project, awarded to Japan without comparing with others who could deliver better (including the Chinese), to link a mere 508km route between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
Even at a mouthwatering 0.1 per cent interest rate, it would annually cost billions in debt repayment for 50 years. It will cost a third of India’s national defence budget and three times the health budget.
Is it anything more than a showpiece when the 166-year-old railways, spread across 120,000km, transporting 22 million passengers daily and 1.101 billion tonnes of freight annually, need heavy revamping?
“This is not the right time for Bullet Train,” E. Sreedharan, famed “Metro Man” who pioneered high-speed rail and built the Delhi Metro, has said.
But Modi is both a showman and a risk-taker. With a tactical leap of faith he has, as they say, “bitten the Bullet”.
But strategically, doubts persist whether this bullet-speed push to India-Japan “Special Strategic and Global Partnership” can deter China and its Border and Road Initiative (BRI).
The partnership aims to enter another area where China, with its deep pockets, is far ahead.
Longer Indian presence, its skilled manpower and the ability to speak English combine well with Japanese technology to explore markets in the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor.
Bilaterally, this partnership is heading towards selling Japanese nuclear power reactors, and working with Indians to build and develop reactor components, instead of selling them outright.
Japan would also be conducting its first-ever sales to any country of defence equipment, including amphibious aircraft. In doing so, it is shedding its post-World War 2 pacifist resolves.
A score of projects underway and more planned envisage huge Japanese investments estimated to be worth five trillion rupees.
For India, the Japanese connection comes without jeopardising its quest for technology from elsewhere. A highly-developed Japan offers India help to complete its manufacturing revolution and providing high-tech solutions to its industrial and defence problems.
What is there for Japan that it has positioned itself as India’s most important strategic partner?
Tokyo’s deteriorating relationship with Beijing (think of Pyongyang) is the most obvious reason. The unstated, but common India-Japan concern is an unpredictable, even transactional, relationship with Donald Trump.
If Tokyo finds Washington’s presence in the western Pacific fatally eroded, New Delhi is wary of the reciprocity that Indian involvement in Trump’s recently-spelt South Asia policy may entail.
Along comes the China factor. Japan is seeking coalitions and India fits in well with its strategy since New Delhi, too, is wary of China’s ways.
So, it is US-Japan-India counterpoise to China with its BRI and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) with Pakistan, and possibly Russia, India’s old ally, now leaning the Beijing way.
Alternatively, take China, Japan and India as Asia’s natural leaders. But the dragon now aspires to a global role that upsets the other two.
New Delhi notes that Beijing has with alacrity opposed Japanese plans of investing in India’s northeast in areas that China disputes.
But Beijing has no compunctions in laying the CPEC through the Kashmir territory that India disputes. Note the Chinese double standards. They underscore India’s many concerns and responses.
If Japan has China and North Korea to deal with, India has a hostile neighbourhood to its west and to its north.
Indians are convinced that irritants on the border with China shall keep popping up.
Taking in the larger picture, nations are interlinked and nobody can compartmentalise foreign relations.
Better outcomes could emerge if the three powers made space for each other than if they followed balance of power concepts. A single miscalculation on the Korean peninsula can set East Asia alight.
One need not go very far back in history. Just the first-half of the 20th century is enough to recollect how a quest for dominion ends.
NST's New Delhi correspondent, Mahendra Ved is the president of the Commonwealth Journalists Association 2016-2018 and a consultant with ‘Power Politics’ monthly magazine. He can be reached via mahendraved07@gmail.com