Try to imagine a place sandwiched between the verdant hills and the sea with many islands of different shapes and sizes visible on the horizon. Imagine that you only need to pull away your curtains and look out of the window. The water is so clear you can see till the very bottom! At night the stars seem so near as if you can touch them if you just stretched an extra bit.
That's how this place looks. The sea is a sparkling emerald green on crystal clear sunny days. In the evening the water turns a silver blue and as the brilliant setting sun dips lower, the silver gives way to molten bronze. As dusk settles in and the night casts her dark veil, the twinkling stars appear like winking blue diamonds; while the fully lit up passing ships seem like treasure troves of colorful glittering precious gems on display. The moon comes up casting her copper colored beams on the black water. Slowly she changes to white as the contours of the scenery come alive when the night is still young.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The Midnight Concert
Since yesterday it has been raining continuously. The day before it had become too hot suddenly so it was a welcome relief as I for one have never been able to enjoy hot weather and actually danced with joy on the street when I had first seen snow during the cold winter as dusk settled in on my way from university to the nearest convenient store. I had even ended up calling people to express my historically ecstatic moment much to their bewilderment. They just could not get what I was being so uproarious about!
Anyway, that's a different story.
Last night, after the rains, the frogs had come out and were having a concert. I had fallen asleep after going back home and after a few hours of deep slumber without any dreams, an orchestra in full swing woke me up in the middle of the night. I listened keenly to the croaky songs sung from the bottom of frogy hearts (or lungs maybe) and finally realized that they were praticing Beethoven's Für Elise for the World Championship of Chorus Concert for frogs!
In Nihongo: 雨後、蛙の合唱団は、世界コンクールにでも出場するつもりなのか、声の限りベートーベンの「エリーゼのために」の練習に励んでいます！
Anyway, that's a different story.
Last night, after the rains, the frogs had come out and were having a concert. I had fallen asleep after going back home and after a few hours of deep slumber without any dreams, an orchestra in full swing woke me up in the middle of the night. I listened keenly to the croaky songs sung from the bottom of frogy hearts (or lungs maybe) and finally realized that they were praticing Beethoven's Für Elise for the World Championship of Chorus Concert for frogs!
In Nihongo: 雨後、蛙の合唱団は、世界コンクールにでも出場するつもりなのか、声の限りベートーベンの「エリーゼのために」の練習に励んでいます！
Monday, May 9, 2011
10 things to learn from Japan
I got this forwarded in email after the earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan. If anyone has copyright problems please let me know.
I admire the way those who suffered stoically faced their grim reality. There is a lot to learn, especially those people who are far away and safe...
A fortnight after the disaster, strong aftershocks continued to rock the affected areas down till Tokyo, and help was yet to reach many people.
1. THE CALM
Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has
been elevated.
2. THE DIGNITY
Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude
gesture.
3. THE ABILITY
The incredible architects, for instance. Buildings swayed but didn’t fall.
4. THE GRACE
People bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody
could get something.
5. THE ORDER
No looting in shops. No honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just
understanding.
6. THE SACRIFICE
Fifty workers stayed back to pump sea water in the N-reactors. How
will they ever be repaid?
7. THE TENDERNESS
Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong
cared for the weak.
8. THE TRAINING
The old and the children, everyone knew exactly what to do. And they
did just that.
9. THE MEDIA
They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No
sensationalizing. Only calm reportage.
10. THE CONSCIENCE
When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the
shelves and left quietly.
I admire the way those who suffered stoically faced their grim reality. There is a lot to learn, especially those people who are far away and safe...
A fortnight after the disaster, strong aftershocks continued to rock the affected areas down till Tokyo, and help was yet to reach many people.
1. THE CALM
Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has
been elevated.
2. THE DIGNITY
Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude
gesture.
3. THE ABILITY
The incredible architects, for instance. Buildings swayed but didn’t fall.
4. THE GRACE
People bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody
could get something.
5. THE ORDER
No looting in shops. No honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just
understanding.
6. THE SACRIFICE
Fifty workers stayed back to pump sea water in the N-reactors. How
will they ever be repaid?
7. THE TENDERNESS
Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong
cared for the weak.
8. THE TRAINING
The old and the children, everyone knew exactly what to do. And they
did just that.
9. THE MEDIA
They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No
sensationalizing. Only calm reportage.
10. THE CONSCIENCE
When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the
shelves and left quietly.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Hiroshima Flower Festival
The Hiroshima flower festival is held on 3rd, 4th and 5th of May every year. I was fortunate to visit this time. Held at and around the Peace Memorial park near the A-bomb dome, it is a treat I am sure many people wait for. Flowers are lined up all around the park. Huge human size paper cranes are displayed on the lawns overlooking the Sadako memorial. Yes, she is the same girl who believed that she would be cured of the after effects of radiation if she could complete making a thousand paper cranes. She could not and died. This story became famous after the WW2 bombing of Hiroshima. Now people from around the world visit her memorial and gift paper cranes in her memory. The roads are blocked for traffic and people in colorful dresses dance as tableaus appear occasionally.
Of course there are many foreigners and Japanese girls in the wildest dresses imaginable. The latter remind me of Harajuku in Tokyo.
This year too the festival was carried out in full splendour with a lot of pomp and show. I enjoyed at the festival, ate a lot at the food stalls lining the roads and also had candyfloss (a rare treat I sometimes offer myself). A lot of people around started staring though, probably thinking of me as another eccentric foreigner eating something meant for kids! The candyfloss was a bit too sweet. I washed it down with some green tea and then had buttered potatoes (boiled potatoes with a huge helping of dripping butter). The Enka guitar band of elderly men was enchanting. So were some of the youngsters. Some of them were kind enough to allow me to take pictures of their costumes. The magic show by an OB of Economics department of Hiroshima University was thrilling and so was the band of wind instruments played by junior high school girls.
I came back a bit tired and contented and although I had fun, perhaps the festival was a bit too loud for this year after the tsunami disaster being labelled as the worst calamity to have struck Japan after the WW2 bombings. Or perhaps I am being a bit cynical as many economists could tell you that spending money is the best way to revive a stuttering economy...
Of course there are many foreigners and Japanese girls in the wildest dresses imaginable. The latter remind me of Harajuku in Tokyo.
This year too the festival was carried out in full splendour with a lot of pomp and show. I enjoyed at the festival, ate a lot at the food stalls lining the roads and also had candyfloss (a rare treat I sometimes offer myself). A lot of people around started staring though, probably thinking of me as another eccentric foreigner eating something meant for kids! The candyfloss was a bit too sweet. I washed it down with some green tea and then had buttered potatoes (boiled potatoes with a huge helping of dripping butter). The Enka guitar band of elderly men was enchanting. So were some of the youngsters. Some of them were kind enough to allow me to take pictures of their costumes. The magic show by an OB of Economics department of Hiroshima University was thrilling and so was the band of wind instruments played by junior high school girls.
I came back a bit tired and contented and although I had fun, perhaps the festival was a bit too loud for this year after the tsunami disaster being labelled as the worst calamity to have struck Japan after the WW2 bombings. Or perhaps I am being a bit cynical as many economists could tell you that spending money is the best way to revive a stuttering economy...
Sunday, March 13, 2011
And they were swept off their feet...
The massive earthquake and the tsunami in Japan was scary and left many destitute and helpless. The scenes on TV are painful (itaitashii...) to watch. Why do so many innocent people have to perish? The fury of mother nature that leaves us helpless despite the best of our technologies that we love to boast about. It is a humbling experience, sad and my heart goes out to those who lost their loved ones and all their belongings. How lucky some of us are to be alive and safe!
Images of a man who ran holding hands with his wife and kid, but the wife and kid having been washed away before they almost made it to safe territory, the crisp images of houses and trucks floating like toys, the water flooding in as people are escaping, and a lone man standing on the roof top of a building caught on camera but the cameraman was too busy to notice him during the shooting of the raging waters... these images leave footprints on our mind long after the tsunami waters recede washing away all traces of existence in some places. Why do film directors spend or rather waste millions shooting gruesome horror scenes when nature gives us aplenty and we have the technology to shoot such horrors from such close quarters in such vivid detail?
One TV channel called up a person who escaped to her sisters place, encouraging her to hold on till help arrived in earnest on the morrow while they were struggling without food, water, and with overflowing temporary toilets...
Also on TV were shown long queues of people waiting outside public telephone booths to call their near and dear ones, a scene that is rare in modern Japan...
Praying things get better soon although things will never be the same for a lot of people as power cuts continue and earthquake continues to rock northern Japan resulting in the first ever nuclear leak here...
Images of a man who ran holding hands with his wife and kid, but the wife and kid having been washed away before they almost made it to safe territory, the crisp images of houses and trucks floating like toys, the water flooding in as people are escaping, and a lone man standing on the roof top of a building caught on camera but the cameraman was too busy to notice him during the shooting of the raging waters... these images leave footprints on our mind long after the tsunami waters recede washing away all traces of existence in some places. Why do film directors spend or rather waste millions shooting gruesome horror scenes when nature gives us aplenty and we have the technology to shoot such horrors from such close quarters in such vivid detail?
One TV channel called up a person who escaped to her sisters place, encouraging her to hold on till help arrived in earnest on the morrow while they were struggling without food, water, and with overflowing temporary toilets...
Also on TV were shown long queues of people waiting outside public telephone booths to call their near and dear ones, a scene that is rare in modern Japan...
Praying things get better soon although things will never be the same for a lot of people as power cuts continue and earthquake continues to rock northern Japan resulting in the first ever nuclear leak here...
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Japan After 2 Years
My mother and brother left me at the airport. Going back after a gap of two years. The excitement of my first visit was well behind me now and I am much older and apprehensive of my future, even having thoughts of old age from time to time. What does life have in store for me? Oh! The eternal pandoras box called life! The stop over at Singapore was brief and this time there was no time to go outside. My drowsy friend called sleep caught up with me like an old lover hesitantly taking my hands. When I opened my eyes, we had almost reached the Southernmost tip of the islands of Japan. I always try catching the first glimpse of land of the territory called Japan. I was to touch down at the Kansai international airport after 10 years! Boy, no other word can describe my feelings at that point of time as the untranslatable Japanese lexicon Natsukashii...!
An ocean of emotions welled up in my small heart as the descent began to land at the airport floating 4 kilometres away from land on the Pacific ocean. As was the case ten years ago, the aircraft circled around like a gigantic seagull, the wings looking all the more broader against the backdrop of the ocean, and then got closer and closer to the water before landing softly on the runway tarmac at the last moment.
It took a while to collect my luggage and head out of the airport where, Ms. Shinto, my homestay mother was waiting for me. As we met and talked with her over breakfast, fleeting snapshots of my first visit to her home whizzed past my inner eye like a slideshow on fast forward mode. Although we talked for more than an hour and a half, it was soon time to go...
The bullet train ride was thrilling. Few things excite me as much as the sheer speed and elegance of a Nozomi Shinkansen. (Can still remember vividly my first glimpse of a bullet train when I leaned over the safety line to take snaps angering the station attendant who tried to pull me away but was not successful till I managed to take a number of photographs, angering him even further. I got the stern rebuke I fully deserved! Nothing of that sort happened this time...)
I reached my destination in the evening. The weather was good. As I waited at the station to be picked up, a lone politician with his helper was trying to attract an audience with a rhetorical speech but no one was interested. What a contrast with India where crowds throng the places when politicians speak!
This place is wonderful as I found out the next day. The weather continued to be good although it was and is very cold. The blue sea nearby with hills all around seems to be a cut out of a scene straight from the animation Ponyo On the Cliff by the Sea. This is the first time that I am at a place without a convenient store, a supermarket, and a post office nearby. But despite all that, I must admit that this place is beautiful!
※(I have always been on the east side of the land of the rising sun and near the sea till date, this time being no exception. Am I getting superstitious?)
An ocean of emotions welled up in my small heart as the descent began to land at the airport floating 4 kilometres away from land on the Pacific ocean. As was the case ten years ago, the aircraft circled around like a gigantic seagull, the wings looking all the more broader against the backdrop of the ocean, and then got closer and closer to the water before landing softly on the runway tarmac at the last moment.
It took a while to collect my luggage and head out of the airport where, Ms. Shinto, my homestay mother was waiting for me. As we met and talked with her over breakfast, fleeting snapshots of my first visit to her home whizzed past my inner eye like a slideshow on fast forward mode. Although we talked for more than an hour and a half, it was soon time to go...
The bullet train ride was thrilling. Few things excite me as much as the sheer speed and elegance of a Nozomi Shinkansen. (Can still remember vividly my first glimpse of a bullet train when I leaned over the safety line to take snaps angering the station attendant who tried to pull me away but was not successful till I managed to take a number of photographs, angering him even further. I got the stern rebuke I fully deserved! Nothing of that sort happened this time...)
I reached my destination in the evening. The weather was good. As I waited at the station to be picked up, a lone politician with his helper was trying to attract an audience with a rhetorical speech but no one was interested. What a contrast with India where crowds throng the places when politicians speak!
This place is wonderful as I found out the next day. The weather continued to be good although it was and is very cold. The blue sea nearby with hills all around seems to be a cut out of a scene straight from the animation Ponyo On the Cliff by the Sea. This is the first time that I am at a place without a convenient store, a supermarket, and a post office nearby. But despite all that, I must admit that this place is beautiful!
※(I have always been on the east side of the land of the rising sun and near the sea till date, this time being no exception. Am I getting superstitious?)
Monday, February 14, 2011
Part-II, Where is the meeting point?
Being in India after such a long time, made me feel like Urashima Taro. My own hometown has changed beyond recognition so I have been learning new things about my own country every day. The following was written in response to a Japanese person’s question regarding the future of India Japan relationship and how it could develop further. I have highlighted some areas where India is lacking, some of which Japan could help India by investing in such key areas and in the process build a firm foundation for a new kind of Indo-Japan relationship in the 21st century. Things are happening, like the bilateral currency accord for $ 3 billion etc. along with some amount of outsourcing and investment, but still we can call them precious little.
1. Soft power: In Japan, the largest numbers of foreign students are from China and Korea. Indians are a minority. In the US of A the largest number of foreign students are from India, (second is China and third is South Korea), a lot of whom have settled down there in the past, making Indians one of the largest diaspora in the US. They have become top class scientists, politicians and administrators too in the course of time. Settling down in Japan is hard. There are very few Indians who have spent their entire lives in Japan and even fewer Japanese who have done the same in India. This factor is going to determine future relations between the two countries in the long run both economically and politically. Japanese soft power, mainly stemming from manga, anime and funky culture has not had much of an effect on India. Not that we need such soft power! As Professor Roger Pulvers has pointed out on a YouTube video, Japan needs to convert soft power into smart power as soft power does not necessarily show an interest in Japan.
2. The IT boom and mathematics: Here are a few straight facts. Only 0.1 percent of the Indian population is engaged in the IT industry. (This sector alone can not sustain the entire country in any way.) This industry is the biggest boom in India now. Bulk of the work comes from the US, a result of outsourcing, often called back office work! This boom is the result of the university education in India for the past sixty years. Everyone is encouraged to become an engineer. Anyone who is not an engineer is frowned upon. All these techies have joined the Information Technology sector and have made it “big”. How big is open to debate. There has not been any invention from this “shining” sector that has affected the world in any significant way. For example, the innovative way Google, Apple Computers, Facebook etc. have. And if you talk of money, well these companies are still far behind their Western counterparts, their R&D expenditure too low to be of any significance. Also, this has nothing to do with being good at math. Being able to do multiplication tables fast is not the big point. Not many students learn upto 20 X 20 as most Japanese would like to believe. (I don’t think it is a big deal to learn multiplication tables by heart. The Japanese who master about 2000 characters in their script could easily do so if they wanted. And no one talks about how many multiplication tables Einstein could recite do they?!). Also, Japanese people should not forget that Japanese students perform far better in the Mathematics Olympiad than their Indian counterparts. If you still have doubts, catch hold of an Indian at random and ask her/ him to perform mental math.
Those people who are engineers but did not find the opportunity to go to the US by a whisker, have a solid foundation of mathematics due to their engineering background. That is how the IT grew. And when money started flowing in, a lot of Indians in the US started to come back to India because they could get well paid jobs here too. But these days even high school pass outs with diplomas are calling themselves engineers!
Indian companies also bought a bulk of the fibre optic cables from US companies when they over invested themselves out of business. So communications with the US became virtually free. Phone calls to Japan are still very expensive and so are sending goods by post.
3. Many people often compare India-US and India-Japan relationships. They should realize that they have been respectively many more differences than similarities and that the numbers involved are vastly different. For example, in the 60’s about 25,000 Indians settled in the US. They were the cream of Indian brain power and some of them have achieved gigantic feats. In recent times, about 20,000 Indians are living in Japan. But it is unfair to compare them with those Indians who settled in the US in those times. None of them have even come near their feats of excellence. Also, they are not the best Indian brains for the best still go to the UK and US.
4. 68% of Indian software exports are dependent on the US. Japan is still a puny player in India. Wonder why!
5. The current scenario of business is only about cost cutting. Japan does not seem too confident or interested in India’s “brain power” yet.
6. As Suvro Sir pointed out, “I think the Japanese are cautious, but they keep informed. When they feel India is ready, they will come to invest willingly enough. Yelling at them is not likely to make them act quicker!” Unless more and more Japanese people come and work with their Indian counterparts and understand the office politics and regional biases that prevail, only investing money is not going to get the desired results.
7. Mobile phones: In 2004, 70 percent of the people in the world had never heard a dial tone i.e. they had never used a telephone. Just six years back mobile phones were a rare luxury in India that few people could afford. In 2008, there were 10.89 million new users for mobile phones in India. Now everyone has a mobile phone including students and domestic helpers. Mobile phones are much cheaper than landlines. A huge market for mobile phone companies. A few years back Japanese mobile phones did not connect in India. Now you can use any Japanese mobile phone, AU, Softbank, Docomo in most cities in India. Just switch it on and call! But due to radiation from mobile phones the sparrows can not be seen anymore. Docomo has a joint venture with TATA.
8. 200 million people (may be many more!) in India live below the poverty line. How to solve that problem is the biggest challenge. How can Japan help? How many Japanese volunteers and teachers do we find here when compared to those going to Africa or south-east Asia or Latin America?
9. Clean drinking water is scarce in India. Another big challenge of the future. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges! An area where Japanese technology can be of immense help. We Indians have forgotten that in ancient times India had a good water system. Some Japanese are doing research on that. Perhaps they have something to teach us in a new/ modern way?
10. National highways are clean and fast. With high speed Volvo buses running between cities, transportation has become faster and more comfortable. This will help commerce and business. Also, Japanese technology can help find culprits of rash driving and make life better. Traffic accidents are on the rise in India and should already be sufficient cause for worry.
11. India is one of the very few developing nations that have avoided famine. Despite troubled politics and ignorant voters, India has maintained her democratic system without much problem. This is something to think about. But of late, rise in onion prices and food scarcity is alarming. We lack proper storage facilities and modern farming methods. More and more farmers are moving to cities to find jobs as farming is no longer a viable livelihood as rising suicide rates partially indicate.
12. There are only 15 million tax payers in a country (India) that has a population of 1.13 billion people. The rich evade taxes and the poor just can not pay; two extremes of the problem; there must be many more reasons. Contrary to popular belief, tax rates are very high in India. Prices of commodities have risen in recent times but not in proportion to the rise in incomes, thus creating disparity.
13. Medicine: There is no national health insurance scheme in India. Medical expenses are so high that people avoid going to doctors or hospitals or rely on free medical help from friends and relatives who are doctors. Any major surgery is beyond the reach of most people. Public hospitals are insanely dirty. An MRI scan is much more expensive in India than in Japan when an individual goes without insurance coverage (insurance is compulsory in Japan) but there is no surety of getting good results because the machines are often old and over used.
14. Solar power: India has abundant sunshine throughout the country. Solar power could be the next best alternative to electricity not just in remote villages but cities as well. Japanese solar panels are good. Could they be installed in bulk?
Given the above points it leaves Japan ample opportunity to develop strategic technological and insurance/ investment ties with India. Simply being the largest recipient of the Japanese ODA is not enough. John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that being the largest recepient of US aid after independence did not bring any significant improvement in India. As a top class economist and former US ambassador to India, he should have known best.
Relationship between India and Japan has at best been at a cursory level so far. But there is a lot of scope to forge deeper ties of friendship as business partners in the 21st century. Suzuki is the largest selling car in India. But they could soon be overtaken by TATA, Hyundai etc. Japan could provide technological help and create their own market for cheap high quality products in India in medicine, water purifiers, solar power, high speed transport, and telecommunications. 3G mobile phones with Japanese technology could be a hit. Also, management science is a much sought after qualification in recent times. Japan could make business schools that taught and offered diplomas and degrees in Japanese Management. Doing this will also increase the demand for knowing the Japanese language.
These technological ties and investment in cheap high quality medical products will achieve much more than ODA. In modern times giving financial aid to other countries is a type of diplomacy and not out of necessity on either the part of the giver or that of the recipient. Although both India and China receive huge amounts of financial aid from Japan, both India and China give a lot of financial aid to other countries. This is true with many other countries.
Economists and some journalists predicted the economic crisis a decade ago. The party had gone on too long in some countries. In present times with a world that is increasingly becoming flat economically, the financial aid diplomacy is just not enough to forge lasting ties.
Similarly, just trying to balance China politically is not going to bring any long term fruitful results.
India Japan relationship does not have much common cultural background. Talking of Buddhism coming to Japan from India is not going to build stronger ties in the modern world. Technological partnership and more collaborative work will be the most beneficial for both sides. Repeating myself, Japan could help India build plants that would process clean water and could also use the sea water available to India on all sides by building distilleries. We would not have to depend so much on the polluted Ganges then.
P.S. LIC India and Nomura securities Japan have recently joined hands in India.
(mostly written in the latter half of 2009)
1. Soft power: In Japan, the largest numbers of foreign students are from China and Korea. Indians are a minority. In the US of A the largest number of foreign students are from India, (second is China and third is South Korea), a lot of whom have settled down there in the past, making Indians one of the largest diaspora in the US. They have become top class scientists, politicians and administrators too in the course of time. Settling down in Japan is hard. There are very few Indians who have spent their entire lives in Japan and even fewer Japanese who have done the same in India. This factor is going to determine future relations between the two countries in the long run both economically and politically. Japanese soft power, mainly stemming from manga, anime and funky culture has not had much of an effect on India. Not that we need such soft power! As Professor Roger Pulvers has pointed out on a YouTube video, Japan needs to convert soft power into smart power as soft power does not necessarily show an interest in Japan.
2. The IT boom and mathematics: Here are a few straight facts. Only 0.1 percent of the Indian population is engaged in the IT industry. (This sector alone can not sustain the entire country in any way.) This industry is the biggest boom in India now. Bulk of the work comes from the US, a result of outsourcing, often called back office work! This boom is the result of the university education in India for the past sixty years. Everyone is encouraged to become an engineer. Anyone who is not an engineer is frowned upon. All these techies have joined the Information Technology sector and have made it “big”. How big is open to debate. There has not been any invention from this “shining” sector that has affected the world in any significant way. For example, the innovative way Google, Apple Computers, Facebook etc. have. And if you talk of money, well these companies are still far behind their Western counterparts, their R&D expenditure too low to be of any significance. Also, this has nothing to do with being good at math. Being able to do multiplication tables fast is not the big point. Not many students learn upto 20 X 20 as most Japanese would like to believe. (I don’t think it is a big deal to learn multiplication tables by heart. The Japanese who master about 2000 characters in their script could easily do so if they wanted. And no one talks about how many multiplication tables Einstein could recite do they?!). Also, Japanese people should not forget that Japanese students perform far better in the Mathematics Olympiad than their Indian counterparts. If you still have doubts, catch hold of an Indian at random and ask her/ him to perform mental math.
Those people who are engineers but did not find the opportunity to go to the US by a whisker, have a solid foundation of mathematics due to their engineering background. That is how the IT grew. And when money started flowing in, a lot of Indians in the US started to come back to India because they could get well paid jobs here too. But these days even high school pass outs with diplomas are calling themselves engineers!
Indian companies also bought a bulk of the fibre optic cables from US companies when they over invested themselves out of business. So communications with the US became virtually free. Phone calls to Japan are still very expensive and so are sending goods by post.
3. Many people often compare India-US and India-Japan relationships. They should realize that they have been respectively many more differences than similarities and that the numbers involved are vastly different. For example, in the 60’s about 25,000 Indians settled in the US. They were the cream of Indian brain power and some of them have achieved gigantic feats. In recent times, about 20,000 Indians are living in Japan. But it is unfair to compare them with those Indians who settled in the US in those times. None of them have even come near their feats of excellence. Also, they are not the best Indian brains for the best still go to the UK and US.
4. 68% of Indian software exports are dependent on the US. Japan is still a puny player in India. Wonder why!
5. The current scenario of business is only about cost cutting. Japan does not seem too confident or interested in India’s “brain power” yet.
6. As Suvro Sir pointed out, “I think the Japanese are cautious, but they keep informed. When they feel India is ready, they will come to invest willingly enough. Yelling at them is not likely to make them act quicker!” Unless more and more Japanese people come and work with their Indian counterparts and understand the office politics and regional biases that prevail, only investing money is not going to get the desired results.
7. Mobile phones: In 2004, 70 percent of the people in the world had never heard a dial tone i.e. they had never used a telephone. Just six years back mobile phones were a rare luxury in India that few people could afford. In 2008, there were 10.89 million new users for mobile phones in India. Now everyone has a mobile phone including students and domestic helpers. Mobile phones are much cheaper than landlines. A huge market for mobile phone companies. A few years back Japanese mobile phones did not connect in India. Now you can use any Japanese mobile phone, AU, Softbank, Docomo in most cities in India. Just switch it on and call! But due to radiation from mobile phones the sparrows can not be seen anymore. Docomo has a joint venture with TATA.
8. 200 million people (may be many more!) in India live below the poverty line. How to solve that problem is the biggest challenge. How can Japan help? How many Japanese volunteers and teachers do we find here when compared to those going to Africa or south-east Asia or Latin America?
9. Clean drinking water is scarce in India. Another big challenge of the future. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges! An area where Japanese technology can be of immense help. We Indians have forgotten that in ancient times India had a good water system. Some Japanese are doing research on that. Perhaps they have something to teach us in a new/ modern way?
10. National highways are clean and fast. With high speed Volvo buses running between cities, transportation has become faster and more comfortable. This will help commerce and business. Also, Japanese technology can help find culprits of rash driving and make life better. Traffic accidents are on the rise in India and should already be sufficient cause for worry.
11. India is one of the very few developing nations that have avoided famine. Despite troubled politics and ignorant voters, India has maintained her democratic system without much problem. This is something to think about. But of late, rise in onion prices and food scarcity is alarming. We lack proper storage facilities and modern farming methods. More and more farmers are moving to cities to find jobs as farming is no longer a viable livelihood as rising suicide rates partially indicate.
12. There are only 15 million tax payers in a country (India) that has a population of 1.13 billion people. The rich evade taxes and the poor just can not pay; two extremes of the problem; there must be many more reasons. Contrary to popular belief, tax rates are very high in India. Prices of commodities have risen in recent times but not in proportion to the rise in incomes, thus creating disparity.
13. Medicine: There is no national health insurance scheme in India. Medical expenses are so high that people avoid going to doctors or hospitals or rely on free medical help from friends and relatives who are doctors. Any major surgery is beyond the reach of most people. Public hospitals are insanely dirty. An MRI scan is much more expensive in India than in Japan when an individual goes without insurance coverage (insurance is compulsory in Japan) but there is no surety of getting good results because the machines are often old and over used.
14. Solar power: India has abundant sunshine throughout the country. Solar power could be the next best alternative to electricity not just in remote villages but cities as well. Japanese solar panels are good. Could they be installed in bulk?
Given the above points it leaves Japan ample opportunity to develop strategic technological and insurance/ investment ties with India. Simply being the largest recipient of the Japanese ODA is not enough. John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that being the largest recepient of US aid after independence did not bring any significant improvement in India. As a top class economist and former US ambassador to India, he should have known best.
Relationship between India and Japan has at best been at a cursory level so far. But there is a lot of scope to forge deeper ties of friendship as business partners in the 21st century. Suzuki is the largest selling car in India. But they could soon be overtaken by TATA, Hyundai etc. Japan could provide technological help and create their own market for cheap high quality products in India in medicine, water purifiers, solar power, high speed transport, and telecommunications. 3G mobile phones with Japanese technology could be a hit. Also, management science is a much sought after qualification in recent times. Japan could make business schools that taught and offered diplomas and degrees in Japanese Management. Doing this will also increase the demand for knowing the Japanese language.
These technological ties and investment in cheap high quality medical products will achieve much more than ODA. In modern times giving financial aid to other countries is a type of diplomacy and not out of necessity on either the part of the giver or that of the recipient. Although both India and China receive huge amounts of financial aid from Japan, both India and China give a lot of financial aid to other countries. This is true with many other countries.
Economists and some journalists predicted the economic crisis a decade ago. The party had gone on too long in some countries. In present times with a world that is increasingly becoming flat economically, the financial aid diplomacy is just not enough to forge lasting ties.
Similarly, just trying to balance China politically is not going to bring any long term fruitful results.
India Japan relationship does not have much common cultural background. Talking of Buddhism coming to Japan from India is not going to build stronger ties in the modern world. Technological partnership and more collaborative work will be the most beneficial for both sides. Repeating myself, Japan could help India build plants that would process clean water and could also use the sea water available to India on all sides by building distilleries. We would not have to depend so much on the polluted Ganges then.
P.S. LIC India and Nomura securities Japan have recently joined hands in India.
(mostly written in the latter half of 2009)
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