The train service would link the Indian financial hub of Mumbai with Ahmadabad, the commercial capital of Modi’s home state, Gujarat, cutting the travel time on the 505-kilometer (315-mile) route from eight hours to two.
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Addressing a joint press meet with Abe, Modi said, “No friend will matter more in realising India’s economic dreams than Japan” while describing Abe as “a personal friend and a great champion of India-Japan partnership”.
The strategic pacts were signed after the summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart, Mr Shinzo Abe.
India has yet to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), making the agreement Japan’s first nuclear deal with a non-NPT member country. The project “will launch a revolution in Indian railways and speed up India’s journey into the future”.
India had begun negotiations with Japan for a civilian nuclear deal in 2010, but it went into dormancy for some years due to Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Among the global issues, Modi and Abe discussed North Korea’s contentious nuclear programme and expressed concern over that country’s continued development of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, including its uranium enrichment activities.
“I know the significance of this decision for Japan, and I assure you that India deeply respect that decision and will honor and respect its commitments”, Mr. Modi said.
The Indian premier spoke warmly of his friendship with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as well as pointing to the power of their political alliance, after signing deals including the $15 billion Shinkansen train.
These include working on defence technology, and agreeing a memorandum of understanding on the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Under the two defense pacts signed, the two sides will share technology, equipment and military information. “It will need legal scrubbing and other technical details will have to be finalised”.
“I cannot think of a strategic partnership that can exercise a more profound influence on shaping the course of Asia and our interlinked ocean regions more than ours”, Modi said at a joint news conference with Abe on Saturday. This, incidentally, could possibly be a “Make in India” project, following technology transfer from Japan.
Japanese atomic power companies like Toshiba, Hitachi and Mitsubishi have been eying the huge nuclear market opened up for the world by the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s 2008 waiver for India.
“Modi and Abe are telegraphing a striking message: We’re taking this relationship to the next level, even at the risk of roiling China”, said Michael Kugelman, senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
China, especially over the past five years, has watched with growing alarm what it fears are attempts by its rivals to strategically encircle it – through a partnership between the US, India, Japan, Australia and, possibly, smaller nations like Singapore and Vietnam.
Analysts see the growing ties between India and Japan partly as a bid to contain China, with whom both have territorial disputes.
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Mr. Modi indicated his support for Mr. Abe as Asian nations struggle with their response to China’s moves to reclaim land in small reefs whose sovereignty is contested by its South China Sea neighbors, including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
