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DIPLOMACY,
INDO-JAPANESE RELATIONS
Kiss
and Make Up
With a
perceptible softening in Japan's attitude, Mori's visit holds promise
of a return to normalcy and opens new doors for economic investment
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Yoshiro
Mori
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As
a high school student, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori took to playing
rugby with passion. Years later, when he joined the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party, he was thought to be better at the sport than politics. However,
it was the aggressiveness imbibed while playing the game that helped him
battle his way to important positions in the party. This April, a quirk
of fate saw him touch down at Japan's highest public office. Dependent
as he is on warring party factions for his survival, Mori is being seen
as the I.K. Gujral of Japanese politics.
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A
History of Missed Opportunities
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AID
Japan was India's largest bilateral aid donor averaging $500 million
a year. But after the 1998 nuclear tests it angrily cut off all
such aid and wants India to sign the CTBT.
TRADE
Since 1991, trade with Japan has been growing, though only at
a secular pace. It now accounts for only 6 per cent of India's total
external trade-far below potential.
FUNDS
Foreign direct investment from Japan has always flattered to
deceive. Actual flow has been only around 25 per cent of the amount
approved.
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So why is
India appearing so smug about Mori's four-day visit to the country beginning
August 21 in Bangalore? On the face of it there's no real cause. Especially
if one considers that post-Pokhran, India's relations with Japan have
been in the doghouse. After the May 1998 nuclear tests, an angry Japan-which
till then was India's largest aid donor, averaging as much as $ 500 million
(Rs 2,500 crore) a year-decided to cut off all funds. It demanded that
India immediately sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) if it
wanted Japan to "reconsider" resuming aid. And though, of late,
there has been a perceptible softening in the country's tone, it has not
relented and the sanctions, or "economic measures" as Japanese
diplomats prefer to call them, remain in place.
Not that
India had much to cheer about in the pre-Pokhran days. Till the '80s,
with the cold war dynamics at work and India's relations with the US showing
no signs of thawing, Japan remained cool but cordial. It is an old axiom
in diplomacy that when two countries speak only of yesteryears, they have
nothing much to talk about in the present or for that matter the future.
For close to 40 years that was true of Indo-Japanese relations.
The ties
improved, albeit at an infuriatingly slow pace, once the Berlin Wall fell.
Only in the early '90s, with Japan searching for new markets and reform-minded
India looking to the East, did the pace quicken. Although there are now
close to 215 major Japanese companies operating in India and annual trade
is worth Rs 18,000 crore, it accounts for only 6 per cent of the country's
external trade. Conversely, India accounts for 0.05 per cent of Japan's
total external trade. Nor has foreign direct investment from Japan lived
up to its promise. While projects totalling Rs 9,000 crore have been approved
since 1991, the actual investment is only around Rs 2,500 crore. Indo-Japanese
relations have been a sorry history of missed opportunities and misgivings.
more...It's
how you say it that counts
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