New Delhi: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shall be on a 2-day India go to beginning Monday (March 20) morning that can concentrate on strengthening the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between the 2 international locations. Kishida’s itinerary consists of essential talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, delivering the forty first Sapru House Lecture on Indo-Pacific, and visiting the Bodhi Tree at Delhi’s Buddha Jayanti Park. He is predicted to put out his imaginative and prescient of Indo-Pacific throughout his lecture.Â
The Bodhi Tree is of great significance, as it’s a sapling from the Holy Bodhi Tree, beneath which the Buddha attained enlightenment. It was gifted by the then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, and planted by India’s then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, in 1964. The 81-acre Buddha Jayanti Park, positioned in Delhi’s central ridge, is a well-liked attraction for vacationers and locals alike.
India and Japan share a Special Strategic and Global Partnership, which has been elevated over time to suggest the rising significance of the connection. Annual Summits and a pair of+2 Foreign and Defence Ministerial Meetings are held between the 2 international locations to debate varied areas of cooperation, together with defence and safety, commerce and funding, S&T, training, healthcare, and significant and rising applied sciences.
Defence and safety cooperation between India and Japan have been rising. Recent milestones on this space embrace the profitable conduct of the primary fighter jet train “Veer Guardian” in January 2023, and the 4th “Dharma Guardian” military train, which was carried out for the primary time in Japan. Maritime safety cooperation and Navy-to-Navy cooperation have additionally seen vital progress, with a number of joint workouts carried out between the 2 international locations.
Japan is a big investor in India, and the 2 international locations have arrange Japan Industrial Townships (JITs) to advertise financial partnership, funding, business, and infrastructure improvement. The two international locations even have a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) that covers varied areas, together with commerce in items and providers, motion of pure individuals, investments, and mental property rights.
Skill improvement and motion of expert staff from India to Japan is an space the place complementarities between the 2 economies exist. Several Memorandums of Cooperation have been signed between India and Japan to facilitate the identical. Kishida’s go to comes at a time when India and Japan are holding essential discussions on a variety of points, together with the quickly altering geopolitical panorama within the Indo-Pacific area.
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