External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar described India and Japan as natural allies during his on-going three day visit (March 6-8) to that country.
Japan is also a QUAD partner of India along with Australia and the US with the goal of providing counter-balance to the world against authoritarian China.
While EAM Jaishankar will be holding a strategic dialogue with his Japanese counterpart Yoko Kamikawa, the Indian Minister in his carefully crafted language has communicated that Japan should be prepared to deal with new India by shedding the past legacy. In short, the two countries will have to develop new rules of engagement and the bilateral relationship will stagnate if Japan behaves like a transactional power and does not share advanced technology with its QUAD ally.
Even though Japanese car makers have been in India for the past 25 years, the total car exports out of the country have not gone beyond USD 5 billion. Compare this with Apple exporting nearly ₹65000 crore worth of iPhones from its one lakh mobile manufacturing facilities in India in 2022-2023 and the big picture becomes even more clear.
Although both Japan and India are facing expansionist China on their doorsteps with Russia adding further pressure on Tokyo, the Fumio Kishida government is still hedging its bets on Beijing with Japan’s pacifist doctrine becoming a major hurdle in India-Japan defence cooperation. Another hurdle is Japan’s unwillingness to transfer technology to India especially when PM Modi is committed to the ‘Make in India’ concept to make Bharat a military-industrial power.
It is due to reluctance of Japan on technology sharing and hard conditions on military platform sale to India that the deal to purchase 12 amphibious search and rescue aircraft from Tokyo was still born due to conditions imposed by Japanese leadership operationally.
Today, India is interested in manufacturing unicorn antennas and lithium ion battery based submarines for the Indian Navy in India through the transfer of technology route from Japan. While Japanese military leadership has shown keen interest in the Indian proposal at the apex level, it is quite evident that Tokyo is reticent in sharing top end technology with its QUAD partner even through the direct government to government acquisition route.
The unicorn antennas add to stealth of warships and the lithium battery submarines are several notches above operationally over the normal diesel-electric submarine and the advanced independent propulsion submarine as prolongs the endurance of submarines under water and adds to operationally with faster charging of battery.
India looks towards Japan as a key partner in its progress towards a developed nation. But time has also come for Japan to recognize that India is not the country it used to be a decade ago.