Not just bullet train, India wants high-speed growth: PM Modi

The bullet train network, made by Japanese technology, will link India’s financial hub Mumbai with Ahmedabad, the capital of Modi’s home state Gujarat.

The train will reduce travelling time between the two cities to three hours from eight.

Modi also said that India will extend to the Japanese people the visa on arrival facility from March 1 next year, and forge better ties in the defence sector, including the potential purchase of equipment such as the US-2 amphibian aircraft for the Indian armed forces.

Japan will also provide $12 billion of soft loans to build India’s first bullet train.

Both India and Japan share apprehensions about China’s expansionism in regional waters. “Tokyo is trying to contain and besiege Beijing by every possible means, and Abe will not miss any chance to draw Modi over to his side to counter China”, Zhao Gancheng, director of Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies wrote in the newspaper.

Tokyo’s decision to enter into nuke talks with New Delhi sparked off strong reactions from the anti-nuclear activists in Japan, as India did not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The deal would benefit Japanese companies with contracts for manufacturing rail cars, tracks, and operating systems.

Modi’s government has set up an office to promote inward investment from Japan, and the two leaders vowed last year to double direct investment in five years.

The two countries also signed agreements on military intelligence and the transfer of defense technology to manufacture weapons in India.

On the nuclear agreement, he said China wasn’t opposed to peaceful use of energy as long as countries fulfilled non-proliferation commitments.

Modi said that India-Japan MoU on civil nuclear cooperation was “more than just an agreement for commerce and clean energy”. However, Bhargava added that exporting automobiles to Japan is not an easy task. “It is a shining symbol of a new level of mutual confidence”, Mr Modi commented and he had a good reason to given the fact that till recently India was a nuclear outcast of the world. “Prime Minister Modi’s economic policies are safe and reliable”. They called for security cooperation between Japan, India, the US and Australia, reflecting a strategy already agreed by the USA and Japan, which is aimed at checking China’s ambitions in the South China Sea.

An energy accord with Japan would allow India to boost its nuclear-power production, easing global pressure for the South Asian nation to cut carbon emissions generated by its coal-fired power plants.

Japanese funds in the form of ODA for projects in India are not new.

The statement said the two Prime Ministers welcomed the agreement reached between the two governments for cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy and confirmed that this agreement will be signed after the technical details are finalised including those relating to necessary internal procedures.

Japan is also eyeing an over Rs 60,000 crore project initiated by India to build six more conventional submarines.