Tokyo: India and Japan are natural partners in a world headed towards "re-globalisation", External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Thursday. He also said that the two countries share basic affinities, being democracies and market economies.
S Jaishankar is in Tokyo for the second leg of his four-day visit to South Korea and Japan.
Addressing the first Raisina Roundtable in the Japanese capital, Jaishankar said, "The world is heading for re-globalisation with the building of resilient and reliable supply chains and trusted and transparent digital transactions."
Jaishankar said the "top 20 or 30 nations today are not what they were two decades ago. Even less so what they were four or eight decades ago.."
"Not only are the countries that impact us different but so are relative weight, importance and capability. As a result, new balances are being sought and occasionally achieved," he said.
"This drives the volatility that we currently characterise as the global order," he said.
Talking about the changing global order, Jaishankar said that it was created by the accumulation of political and economic rebalancing, accelerated by globalisation, and is now reflected in emerging multi-polarity.
He said that the global order's structure has also frayed in many ways, "becoming less predictable or even less disciplined".
Jaishankar asserted that India and Japan are natural partners in the re-globalisation of the world as democracies and market economies, they share basic affinities, too.
He underscored that the "neatly compartmentalised theatres" that were formed after the Second World War have started changing as "capabilities are constrained and commitments come into question.
He said that a "more modest era" requires greater collaboration and wider arenas to be effective and added that a good example of this is the emergence of the Indo-Pacific.
Jaishankar asserted that India and Japan's commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific is being taken forward by the Quad each year. "The value of this contribution is also being increasingly appreciated across the world," he said.
The QUAD is a four-member strategic security dialogue between the US, Australia, India and Japan.
He underlined that the comfort India and Japan have built up is a foundation to think more ambitiously as the two nations look at the opportunities and challenges of the future.
"The progress in India in the last decade promises even more for a partnership," he said.
Asserting that India's transformation makes it a more effective and credible partner, Jaishankar said, "Whether it is the ease of doing business, infrastructure development, ease of living, digital delivery, a startup and innovation culture or shaping the international agenda, India is clearly a very different country today. This is important for the Japanese to recognise." The Raisina Roundtable is a key step towards enhancing track 2 exchanges between India and Japan, the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi said in a statement ahead of Jaishankar's visit.
Jaishankar's visit and meetings in Tokyo will provide strategic guidance to India's functional cooperation in various areas, impart further momentum to bilateral exchanges, and set the agenda for future cooperation, it said.