Modi's Japan visit a tale of promises

The Indian media had to manage headlines around Japan's promise to accelerate negotiations on these elusive deals and with its promise to invest $34 billion in the next five years, which would include technology transfers in soft sectors like healthcare, clean energy, smart cities, road and skill development, and cleaning of the Ganges River.

What remains the most glaring doublespeak is that while Japan desperately needs India's market, it still remains cagey. Indo-Japanese trade shrunk from $18.5 billion in 2012 to $16.3 billion last year. Similarly, while Japan enjoys protection of the US nuclear umbrella, it refuses to recognize India's security concerns and sovereign right to develop nuclear technologies.

Japan fails to see that its closest partner, the US, has come around to do nuclear business with India and that it not only describes India as "a responsible nation with advanced nuclear technologies" but is also pushing for India's entry into technology control regimes, including the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Japan sure is making less noise on India not being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and India has acceded to joining fissile material reduction negotiations, but Tokyo wants New Delhi's commitment on "not testing nuclear weapons" put into a bilateral treaty. Neither the US example nor Modi's personal promise to that effect was enough for Japan to agree to the request for Japan-India cooperation in nuclear technology.

Compared to the length that Prime Minister Modi travelled to meet Japanese sensibilities, he seems to have got little more than promises. India's trade with China, despite all the bilateral problems, is four times of that with Japan. So ties with Japan cannot be advanced at the cost of China, especially because Modi's gestures to Japan are likely to be misread in Beijing as anti-Chinese.

The author is a professor of International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.