6 active areas of cooperation, as of 12 May 2026. Click any card for the full brief.
01 INFRASTRUCTURE DEEP
Japan is India's largest ODA partner Japan became India's largest source of Official Development Assistance in the 1980s-90s, and the relationship deepened after the two countries' 2000 Global Partnership (agreed by PMs Mori and Vajpayee) put infrastructure financing at its centre. JICA's signature project, Delhi Metro Phase I, broke ground in 1998 and opened in 2002, becoming the template JICA has since replicated across Indian cities.
Financing scaled up sharply through the 2010s and 2020s: JICA backed successive Delhi Metro phases, Chennai Metro, Bengaluru Metro, the North-East Road Network Connectivity project, and - most prominently - the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR), India's first bullet train, using Japanese Shinkansen technology under a soft ODA loan agreed in 2015 and disbursed in tranches since, including a further loan tranche confirmed in December 2023.
Total committed ODA across active projects now exceeds ¥4 trillion, making Japan by far India's largest ODA partner; MAHSR construction continues with a partial-corridor opening targeted later in the decade, while new metro and road financing rounds are agreed most years at the India-Japan Annual Summit.
02 SEMICONDUCTORS & TECH DEEP
Semiconductor supply chain partnership Technology cooperation is the newest pillar of the relationship, growing out of the broader Digital Partnership agreed during PM Modi's 2018 visit to Japan, which set up cooperation on 5G, AI, and talent mobility.
As India began building its own semiconductor policy from 2021 (the India Semiconductor Mission), Japan - a legacy chip-materials and equipment power - became a natural partner: the two governments signed a Memorandum of Cooperation on a Japan-India Semiconductor Supply Chain Partnership in July 2023, covering joint research, talent exchange and co-investment across chip design, manufacturing and packaging, alongside a broader India-Japan Fact Sheet on Economic Security Cooperation.
Implementation is still early-stage relative to India's parallel semiconductor pacts with the US and South Korea, with joint working groups meeting to identify specific investment and R&D projects; talent and researcher exchange programmes under the partnership have expanded fastest so far.
SEMICONDUCTORS 5G
Read brief → 03 DEFENCE ACTIVE
2+2 dialogue and expanding cooperation Defence ties trace to a 2008 Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation, but accelerated after PM Shinzo Abe's landmark 2007 'Confluence of the Two Seas' speech to India's Parliament, which first articulated the Indo-Pacific framing both countries now use routinely.
India and Japan held their inaugural 2+2 Foreign and Defence Ministerial Dialogue on 30 November 2019 - Japan became only the second country, after the United States, with which India holds this format. Annual joint exercises followed: army exercise Dharma Guardian (since 2018), naval exercise JIMEX (held periodically since 2012, now annual), and air-force exercise Veer Guardian (first held 2023). Talks over Japan's US-2 amphibious search-and-rescue aircraft have run for over a decade without a concluded sale, remaining a symbol of unrealised potential alongside the more successful exercise track.
The relationship was elevated to a 'Special Strategic and Global Partnership' in 2014, building on the 2000 Global Partnership, 2006 Strategic and Global Partnership, and the 2015 'Japan and India Vision 2025' framework; defence cooperation now sits alongside economic security as a standing agenda item at the annual summit.
04 TRADE & INVESTMENT DEEP
CEPA in force since 2011 Japanese commercial engagement with India began decades before formal strategic ties matured - Panasonic set up manufacturing in 1972, and Suzuki's landmark 1982 joint venture with the Indian government to create Maruti Udyog became the foundation of India's modern car industry and remains, as Maruti Suzuki, India's largest carmaker.
A Joint Study Group process begun in 2007 led to the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), signed 16 February 2011 and in force from 1 August 2011, phasing out tariffs on the large majority of two-way trade in goods and services. Japanese investment broadened well beyond autos over the following decade to include Honda, Toyota, Sony, Panasonic, and a wave of manufacturing and financial-services entrants.
Cumulative Japanese FDI into India reached about $43.3 billion between April 2000 and December 2024, making Japan the fifth-largest source of FDI into India (roughly 6% of the total); bilateral trade has grown well past $20 billion annually since CEPA took effect, though it remains modest relative to the scale of Japanese investment commitments.
05 CLEAN ENERGY ACTIVE
Green and digital transition Clean-energy cooperation grew out of decades-older JICA-financed power-sector lending, but took on its current shape as both governments pursued net-zero targets - India for 2070, Japan for 2050 - through the 2020s.
A Japan-India Clean Energy Partnership was agreed to cover hydrogen and ammonia co-firing in thermal plants, offshore wind, and grid-storage technology; Japan's commitments at the G7 Hiroshima Summit in May 2023 referenced joint hydrogen/ammonia supply-chain financing that fed directly into bilateral plans. The 16th India-Japan Annual Summit's Joint Statement named a clean hydrogen/ammonia demonstration project in Odisha as a flagship initiative.
Implementation remains at an early, largely feasibility-and-financing stage as of the most recent summit cycle, with Japanese trading houses and utilities (among them JERA and Mitsubishi-linked entities) examining ammonia co-firing pilots at Indian thermal plants alongside continued JICA renewable-energy and grid-modernisation lending.
06 PEOPLE-TO-PEOPLE GROWING
Growing student and cultural exchange People-to-people ties have historically been thin relative to the scale of economic engagement - the resident Indian diaspora in Japan numbers only around 40,000, small next to Gulf or Anglosphere communities - but have grown steadily as Japan opened new legal migration pathways.
Japan created its Specified Skilled Worker (SSW) visa category in April 2019 to address chronic labour shortages, and India signed a bilateral Memorandum of Cooperation with Japan on sending skilled workers under the scheme in January 2021, opening pathways in caregiving, manufacturing, construction and IT-adjacent sectors. Japanese-language study in India has grown alongside this, with Japanese now the most widely studied East Asian language at Indian universities and language institutes.
Numbers under the SSW route remain modest relative to India's other overseas-worker corridors, but both governments have flagged expanding it further as part of the broader push (agreed at recent Annual Summits) to more than double the Indian community in Japan over the coming years, alongside growing student-exchange and Japanese-industry-linked technical-training programmes.
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