India Japan should start considering the long delayed nuclear deal. The benefits for both countries are immense.

AN INDO-Japan Neuclear deal can be beneficial to both countries. A much awaited Indo-Japanese nuclear deal had never really been able to take off due to strange political indecisiveness will in both countries. Still scarred by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing of 1945, the Japanese aversion to nuclear armament globally is quite understandable.

But what beats reason is Japanese harmony and even delight in being under the nuclear deterrence umbrella of their erstwhile annihilators that is the United States. It is a clear indication of the fact that principles and thus political alignments change with times. History has been replete with such events and the Japanese can have a re-look at the world's fourth largest economy that remains docile in international circles even after berated nuclear tests and armament, which remains to act only as deterrence.

Like cars, LCDs and cameras, India needs power to run them and a lot of it. India envisages adding 106470 MWs of generation capacity in the next (12th) five year plan, to its existing capacity of 170228 MW. Most of it will come from the use of fossil fuels, adding to greenhouse emissions, leading to enhanced global warming. As an island nation Japan is at a greater threat by rising sea levels than the obscure chance of India hurling nuclear bombs at one of its significant trade partners. And greatest of all, the United States, Japan?s protectorate and a major importer has revoked its nuclear untouchability of the last century on India for nuclear commerce for civilian and peaceful purposes.

Moreover, India and Japan can have a mutually beneficial relationship in technology transfer, far greater than any other pair.

India resembles Japan in population density and strategies employed in the island nation to relocate/acquire people/land can be replicated or Indianized. Going by recent unrest (and regime changes) relating to land acquisition across industries and states, India should be better prepared for tackling such issues that are bound to come up in building facilities which should have uninhabited areas at least in a radius of 10 kilometers.

Japan too is under immense ethical pressure to prove that the technology being used in its nuclear power plants is safe and the recent destruction in Fukushima brought by a tsunami was an unavoidable natural disaster from which it had its lesson. The moral burden has surged with Germany declaring to close all its nuclear power facilities by 2022.

India, with all its power hunger can become a good showpiece for Japanese nuclear technology in motion, invigorating its economy and saving the world from significant carbon emissions. But India has to sort its internal strife revolving largely around corruption to move ahead resolutely in forming and harnessing such alliances to become a real superpower.

(By Indranil Sarkar)