A 5.7 per cent growth (which some might say is the United Progressive Alliance’s legacy) is the best dowry Narendra Modi could have taken to Japan. That is something to remember amidst the justified jubilation over personal rapport, political affinity, successful deals and marks of courtesy like Shinzo Abe flying to Kyoto to receive his guest.
In the past Japanese diplomats have got very worked up when I pointed out that the true state of India-Japan relations is best reflected not in effusions about Justice Radha Binode Pal, Rabindranath Tagore, Subhas Chandra Bose or the latest favourite, Swami Vivekananda, but in actions like no Japanese Prime Minister visiting India for 23 years between 1960 and 1983. They argued that other Japanese ministers came to India as did Emperor Akhihito and Empress Michiko as crown prince and crown princess. Agreed, but the lessons of the contrast between that 23-year lull and the activity that preceded it should never be forgotten.
Nobusuke Kishi became Prime Minister in February 1957, and visited India in May. Hayato Ikeda succeeded Kishi in July 1960, and visited India in November. Those were years of promise. But it was 23 years before another Japanese Prime Minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, thought New Delhi important enough for a visit. Then, as India responded to changing global conditions, Toshiki Kaifu travelled to Delhi in 1990. As I pointed out in my book, Waiting for America: India and the US in the New Millennium, “The first two visits in quick succession, the long interval, and then the shorter gap of six years, provided a thermometer of India’s economic health.”
Much is being made of the huge aid Japan gave China. But although China made splendid use of Japanese funds to create what might soon become the world’s largest economy, it wasn’t by any means the first nation Tokyo favoured. That honour goes to India. In 1958, India became the first developing country Japan considered worthy of economic assistance. In the 1960s, India was Japan’s single biggest supplier of iron ore and cotton. By 1980, India’s share of Japanese imports of iron had dropped from 30 per cent to 13 per cent, while cotton imports from India fell by 50 per cent. Tokyo found it simpler to develop iron ore mines in Australia than to cope with India’s complicated and time-consuming procedures and suspicion of foreign corporations and capitalist economics.
Justice Pal’s courage in defying Allied opinion at the Tokyo war crimes trial or Jawaharlal Nehru’s rejection of the post-war treaty that the Americans drew up didn’t compensate for India’s sluggish economy. Gratitude isn’t the currency of international relations.
Japan’s withdrawal from the region — South Asia’s share of Japan’s total imports dropped from 3.2 per cent to 0.9 per cent between the 1960s and 1980s — was partly a result of India’s closed door policies. Barriers were high and tight. The sacred cows of import substitution, self-sufficiency and conservation of foreign exchange were invoked to erect barriers against the rest of the world. Purist disapproval of Western consumerism sanctified isolation.
Even the failure of the eastern equivalent of the train in Rajasthan called Palace on Wheels showed how easily the best schemes can go wrong. Indian Railways had specifically planned a train for Japanese tourists to visit Bodh Gaya, Rajgir, Nalanda and other places of Buddhist interest in the eastern states. It didn’t catch on. The train didn’t run on time. Accommodation on board and at the halts was found to be below standard.
Japanese stomachs couldn’t stand the cuisine. Our kitchens repelled them. Having only this weekend suffered one of eastern India’s reputedly best trains — this is being written on board the Shatabdi Super Fast Express from Puri to Howrah — I can understand the meticulous Japanese being outraged by our standards of hygiene and cleanliness. And so the experiment was written off as a costly failure.
I mention these precedents to warn of the challenges involved in doing business with a perfectionist people like the Japanese. They are briskly businesslike. They are as efficient as robots. They are punctual to a fault. And they are now ready to pour money into India to build highways, railways and ports.
But we must ask ourselves what India can do in return for Japan. It is no longer in India’s interest to just supply raw materials. But our manufacturing base needs expanding and that is a form of investment we can benefit from and the Japanese might find profitable. The medium is the message. Mr Modi’s trip, and, even more, Sushma Swaraj’s trip that wasn’t, point to another level of interaction.
The external affairs minister was supposed to fly to Beijing for meetings with her Chinese and Russian counterparts, Wang Yi and Sergei Lavrov. That was cancelled. A scheduled visit by China’s President, Xi Jinping, has also been postponed. The business deals clinched during Mr Modi’s visit, the Varanasi-Kyoto partnership and discussions of India’s nuclear needs must be assessed in the context of the perceived challenge of China.
The Senkaku Island dispute is only a symptom of the overall worry felt by Japan and some Southeast Asian countries. India, they are convinced, can add weight to their side. It’s in India’s interest to do so providing India can also remain friends with its biggest trading partner, a country moreover with which it has substantial territorial disputes. Mr Modi has laid the foundations of a major diplomatic edifice on his first major foreign trip as Prime Minister. It’s now for the support team at home to ensure the robust growth that alone will take the relationship to successful fruition is maintained.
– The writer is a senior journalist, columnist and author
