Japan poised to build India’s first bullet train

Abe is set to meet with Indian business leaders, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj and President Pranab Mukherjee before heading Saturday to Varanasi, India’s holy city on the River Ganges and Modi’s parliamentary constituency. For its part, India has been more assertive toward China in recent months, drawing up plans to develop a disputed region along their border and echoing language used by the USA and Japan to criticize Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea. Coast guard ships from Japan and China regularly tail one another around islets disputed between the two countries in the East China Sea, while border tensions linger between India and China, which fought a four-week war in 1962 over their Himalayan border. Japan was the first country Modi visited outside the Indian subcontinent after he took office in May a year ago. A partnership city arrangement was signed between Varanasi and Kyoto during Modi’s visit to Japan previous year.

A deal with India would be the second successful case of Japan exporting its bullet train technology to a foreign market, following a deal with Taiwan in 2007. Abe, in a research interview, viewed that India-Japan security cooperation would act as a stabilizing force in Asia, particularly in the light of the growing power disequilibrium.

An announcement was expected to be made over the weekend during Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to India.

For Abe, “a strong India is in the best interest of Japan, and a strong Japan is in the best interest of India”.

Japan had offered to finance 80 per cent of the cost of the train linking financial capital Mumbai with Ahmedabad, the commercial centre of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, at an interest rate of less than 1 per cent.

Both Abe in Japan and Modi in India lead majority governments and hence are not prone to the pulls and pressures of coalition politics.

Bullet trains will be a reality soon in India.

Both the prime ministers met at the last annual summit in Tokyo and both agreed to lift up the bilateral relationship to “special strategic and global partnership”.

“The two sides are discussing financing terms that would disburse about 100 billion yen a year for over a decade or so”. This deal of India-Japan will helps India to grow up at a higher level and also this would be very beneficial for the peoples of India.