India-Japan action plan targets exchange of 5 00,000 personnel: Govt tells RS

The action plan is part of the Joint Vision for the Next Decade adopted at the India-Japan annual summit held in Tokyo last year, Singh said

An India-Japan action plan for human resource cooperation envisages the exchange of more than 500,000 personnel in both directions over the next five years, including 50,000 skilled personnel from India, minister of state for external affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

The action plan is part of the Joint Vision for the Next Decade adopted at the India-Japan annual summit held in Tokyo last year, Singh said in a written reply to a question from BJP MP Sujeet Kumar. The Joint Vision encompasses the eight sectors of economy, economic security, mobility and infrastructure, ecological sustainability, technology and innovation, health, people-to-people exchanges and state-prefecture partnerships.

The Joint Vision aims to advance bilateral cooperation to strengthen economic relations with the Global South and harness its growth potential. It also includes promotion of private sector-led businesses and investments in India and the concentration of Japanese companies in India as a hub for invigorating business collaboration with countries in South Asia and Africa, Singh said.

“The Next Gen People-to-People Partnership in the Joint Vision includes the Action Plan for India-Japan Human Resource Exchange and Cooperation which targets an exchange of more than 500,000 personnel in both directions in the next five years, including 50,000 skilled personnel and potential talents from India to Japan,” he said.

Capacity building and skill development are focus areas of the action plan and are being taken forward through collaboration in vocational training, internship programmes, exchanges of researchers and students, and promoting Japanese language education in India.

The Joint Vision includes other initiatives to enhance industry collaboration, such as the India-Japan Economic Security Initiative, which is focused on strengthening supply chains for key goods and materials to foster market diversification and advance cooperation in cutting-edge technologies.

At the annual summit held in New Delhi in July, the two sides released the Joint Declaration on Economic Security and the Factsheet 2.0 on India-Japan Economic Security Cooperation, Singh said. The Next Generation Mobility Partnership (NGMP) envisages cooperation in infrastructure, logistics and mobility. The memorandum of cooperation on the NGMP was signed by the two sides on July 2, Singh said.

As part of the outcomes for the annual summit held in New Delhi in July, the two sides agreed to further strengthen cooperation in economic security, energy resilience, artificial intelligence, batteries, pharmaceuticals and medical devices, bio-gas, and research and development, Singh said.

Rezaul H Laskar is the Foreign Affairs Editor at Hindustan Times. His interests include movies and music.