The Indo-Japan deals may herald new possibilities for India’s future
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Make in India campaign, one of the biggest obstacles to see that campaign to fruition is the lack of a seamless power supply for industries. Enter nuclear power. This may be just one of the many components - wind, hydro, solar – of power generation in a new age that battles climate change, but it’s certainly a step forward into non pollutant power generation territory.
Asia second and third biggest superpowers have inked deals on many different fronts – health, tax, armed forces and others, a total of 16 deals. But the two newsworthy ones, atleast for now, are the high speed trains and the nuclear energy deals.
India plans to introduce, with Japan’s help obviously, a high speed train on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route. This plan is worth 12 billion US dollars and will perhaps take mass transport in India onto another level. If Indian Railways can make this one route work, there’s no telling what else can be done across the country. Of course there are detractors, who state that the money could have been put to better use elsewhere, perhaps on cargo routes so that loads are equally distributed. But, this deal certainly does signal the coming of a new era.
Another new era could be one that heralds the arrival of India’s nuclear energy plan, as the Make In India dream is realized. Japan will provide expertise that will set the Indo-US nuclear deal in motion and lay the groundwork for the nuclear plant come up in Gujarat. Of course, Japan has set strict clauses that can terminate the deal if India does use nuclear power for military use. Since they are the only country to have faced the wrath of a nuclear bomb, it is obvious that they be rigid in their stance on military use. They have also laid down proper parameters on reprocessing nuclear fuel, one of the first of its kind with a country that has not signed the Non Proliferation Treaty.
India’s nuclear industry has been indigenous thus far. But with Japan’s expertise and their knowhow in forging of single plate reactor pressure vessels, things could change for the better in India. However, this does not mean that the country’s nuclear industry should experience a boost. There are a lot of things that are at play. There is a strong anti-nuclear lobby in India, one that could fairly throw a spanner in the works if the Centre decides to build nuclear plants across the country. The project in Gujarat has to be completed and tested first. Japan had massive problems with their Fukushima plant in the aftermath of the 2011 disaster and have only just restarted the plant.
It makes sense that Japan and India have signed deals that will profit both the countries, considering neither of them are at ease with China’s rapid growth in many sectors. But, India will have to tread carefully, especially on the nuclear and high speed rail deals. Success means that the country will have hit another gear, but will it be worth the risk?
