The emerging India-Japan relationship has been met with extreme reactions – from enthusiasm and protests in India and Japan, to concern in China.
This new “strategic partnership,” and particularly the nuclear cooperation under negotiation, does not portend well for Asia. P K Sundaram, a strong advocate of better relations between the people of India and Japan, tells us why.
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trong ties between India and Japan can be seen as a pre-requisite for the emergence of Asia and could, in the context of a broader Asian regionalism, provide a way out of the morass created by a 20th century dominated by the West: militarism and wars, ecological crises and growth-obssessed economies. However, the current architecture of the bilateral relationship is centered on increased joint military initiatives and negotiations of civil nuclear cooperation and partnership for s fragile ecosystems. In particular, absent a change in course, it
will fuel an anachronistic drive for nuclear energy in India, which is being imposed by the government through brutal repression amid macorporate-centric economic growth in India that is unleashing horror on its rural poor and ruining itssive peaceful protests by its farmers, fishermen and citizens.
Contours of the partnership
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1)
Regional balance and stability in Asia: the current phase of close India-Japan relations is animated by a shared strategic agenda of encircling and countering China. The recent visit became more significant following heightened tensions with China over the latter's alleged incursion in Ladakh. Before the current border tensions, India and Japan had last year launched joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. Joint exercises between the Coast Guards of India and Japan were also held in Chennai in January 2012, and in Tokyo Bay in November 2012. Enhanced naval and maritime cooperation figures prominently in the joint statement issued last week.
The strategic partnership between India and Japan spans a wide range of issues – from war in Afghanistan to the extended ASEAN security dialogues. While the two partners maintain that the maritime cooperation is for tackling piracy and ensuring safe commerce on the seas, China has considered it a threat to its interests in the Indian Ocean and part of the larger US strategy to encircle China.
Singh and Abe May 2013
International experts have warned against the perils of such efforts to contain China. Evan Resnick writes: “
The continued conjunction of an increasingly powerful China with an ever more tightly-drawn US defence perimeter surrounding it poses a serious risk to peace and stability in East Asia. The Cold War case study imparts that the effective long-term containment of a rising adversary may paradoxically necessitate some accommodation of that state’s most urgent security concerns.” This growing rivalry has also accelerated China's increased closeness with Pakistan, which includes providing more reactors and the construction of the China-Pakistan corridor through what India considers Pakistan- occupied Kashmir (PoK). Chinese premier Li Keqiang visited Pakistan immediately after India this month, and spoke of a new vigor in their bilateral relations. Pakistan felt humiliated by India being given selective entry into global nuclear commerce facilitated by the US in 2008, amounting to a legitimization of India's nuclear weapons. Pakistan continues to face an international embargo on nuclear commerce and its non-cooperation on several issues stems from this setback.
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inal blow to a nuclear non-proliferation regime guaranteeing nuclear profits: One of the key components of the multi-layered bilateral dialogue is negotiating a civil nuclear agreement with India. Besides allowing access to Japanese technology for its civilian nuclear facilities, the nuclear agreement is also crucial for US and French nuclear corporations. Their projects, worth billions of dollars, are stuck because certain crucial components for those reactors have to be supplied by Japanese companies – which cannot happen without a bilateral nuclear agreement between India and Japan. Such a bilateral agreement is important for the US since its major nuclear corporations, Westinghouse and General Electric (GE), are now owned by the Japanese companies Toshiba and Hitachi. Hence, both the US and France have been pushing Japan to enter into a nuclear agreement with India.
However, Japan's decision to reward a country that has conducted nuclear tests and is continuously advancing its nuclear arsenal and delivery systems would be a fatal blow to the nonproliferation regime and would further reduce prospects for global disarmament. At a time when there are intense international pressures to prevent Iran from acquiring advanced civil nuclear capabilities as a serious threat to the proliferation regime, this would extend an India-US nuclear deal under which the US steered selective exemption for India from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) rules in 2008 (these prohibit the supply of nuclear technology to non-signatories of the NPT). In fact, the NSG evolved out of the international response after India conducted its first nuclear tests in 1974 with the material and expertise it acquired from Canada, US, France and other countries under the rubric of the “peaceful” use of nuclear energy.
However, there is widespread speculation that the Japanese government will abandon its insistence on honoring the CTBT and finalize the agreement with India once the Liberal Democratic Party returns to power with a stronger mandate after the upcoming July elections.In this 15th year since India's 1998 nuclear tests, the
legitimization of nuclear weapons by Japan would set a bad precedent for other countries and would boost the nuclear and conventional arms race in South Asia. Contrary to initial claims that nuclear weapons would bring strategic stability to South Asia, India’s defence budget has gone up from Rs. 35,277 crore in 1998 to a whopping 2,03,671.1 crore in 2013 accelerating a regional arms race. According to a SIPRI report published in March, India this year became the world's largest importer of arms. The modernization of nuclear arsenals and the diversification of delivery systems is also proceeding unabated in the region. A Japan-India nuclear deal will strengthen the race to militarization and heighten the risk of nuclear war in Asia.
3) Fuelling India's nuclear energy expansion
The bargain legitimizing India's nuclear weapons in return for its purchase of reactors from the US, Russia, France and now Japan has translated into horror for the common people of India. While the India-US nuclear deal was touted as a convergence of the world’s oldest and biggest democracies, the Government of India is repressing large, grassroots anti-nuclear movements and ignoring the voices of village-level democratically elected bodies. India has plans to build at least 20 more reactors in the next 20-30 years, and has announced ambitious plans to produce 25% of its total electricity by nuclear power – a 100 fold expansion compared to its present nuclear capacity. This expansion has threated people with displacement and the loss of livelihood, radiation and threats to health and safety, and the forcible acquisition of agricultural land and irreversible damage to fragile ecosystems in several parts of the country.Popular protests on the issue of nuclear power in India have stemmed from three concerns: livelihood issues for the Indian poor, the inherent dangers of nuclear reactors and fears of an accident after Chernobyl and Fukushima, and the complete lack of transparency, accountability and efficiency of the Indian nuclear establishment.
The Indian state, in stark contrast, has repeatedly resorted to brutal repression against the people. In response to protests, thousands of policemen surrounded the villages in Koodankulam for several days cutting off essential supplies including food and medicines, flying planes above protesting people to intimidate them, killing fishermen in Jaitapur and Koodankulam with indiscriminate firing and baton-charges, ransacking houses and destroying fishing boats.
The passports of many youth in the region, who work as migrant labor in the Arabian Gulf, were impounded. The Prime Minister himself indulged in the demonization of the protests calling them “foreign funded.” International activists and journalists, including three Japanese nationals trying to visit Koodankulam, have been deported. While international surveys have showing popular disapproval of nuclear energy the world over, the Indian government sent psychological therapists to “counsel” protesting villagers in complete contempt for people's intelligence. The goverment has also refused to make public basic documents related to safety and the site-selection of Koodankulam and other reactors.
The Supreme Court of India has recently given a go ahead to the Koodankulam reactors, overlooking the blatant violations of the regulator's own norms. The Court’s verdict rests on three hugely contested premises: the judges’ belief in the necessity of nuclear energy for India’s progress, their faith in the country’s nuclear establishment to responsibly perform its role, and the judges’ notion of the larger public interest amidst the apprehensions of small sections of people who they believe should make way for the country’s progress. Not only have the judges given judicial sanctity to these contestable propositions, they have also completely overlooked the Koodankulam-specific violations of safety norms raised by the petitioners. This is perhaps the world's only reactor being commissioned without an independent assessment of its environmental impact, without a natural source of fresh water, with thousands of people living a mere 700 metres from the reactor, and without accommodating the post-Fukushima lessons about the risk of housing the spent fuel pool in the main reactor building.
4) Japan's partnership with the Indian elite's anti-people and eco-destructive model of growth
The current 2+2 architecture of India-Japan relations prioritizes defense ties and a completely misleading and irrational model of economic “growth” over all else.. I
magine that India, China and Japan could together transform the global energy scenario into a safer, cleaner and certainly greener future. This could be a wonderful moment for Asia and one on which there is need for powerful, independent and collective leadership!” The Indian government is obsessed with achieving a 9-10% annual growth rate in coming years. However the surge in the growth rate over the last few years has been entirely jobless. In fact a recent study concluded that India has had negative job growth. The major reason is that while growth is negative in the manufacturing sector, agriculture is facing its worst crisis in India's recorded history and is experiencing a sharp decline. I
The current economic partnership between India and Japan would spur such a callous and nakedly lopsided “progress” in India. One such collaborative project that found prominent mention in the joint statement is an instructive case. The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project is a highly eco-destructive project to develop a high-speed road of 1700 kms from Delhi to Mumbai and build mega cities along this road. Thousands of villages would be displaced, land owners would make huge profits, and the agriculture in 6 states would be ruined. The DMIC would require about 10,000 hectares for the road and 20,000 hectares for the industrial zone, tearing through densely populated states and farmland. This is the biggest urbanization plan in India's history and would also mean its l
argest displacement of people – far more even than the bloody transfer of population during the India-Pakistan partition. To complete and sustain this project newer power plants and new mines would be required that would mean more displacement and the further erosion of India's rapidly depleting green cover. These 6 states in North India produce most of its food grain and the farmers are largely dependent on river and groundwater. Even beyond the project area, farmers would face acute water crises since this project would suck dry their ground water and irrigation canals. A massive movement of farmers is already emerging against this project.
While the world is still grappling with the implications of the Fukushima meltdowns, completion of the Japan-India nuclear agreement would be anachronistic. It would strengthen the insanity of India's imposing nuclear reactors on its people against their will. It would further fuel the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan and would provide the ultimate legitimacy for India's nuclear tests. The agreement would destabilize the Asian continent by promoting India-Japan's strategic role in encircling China. An online appeal signed by more than 2000 international citizens has called for the termination of the nuclear agreement and a moratorium on Japan's nuclear export policy. It is time we listen to these voices of sanity.