INTALKWITH
HIDEAKI DOMICHI AMBASSADOR OF JAPAN TO INDIA

Japan's Ambassador to India, Mr. Hideaki Domichi, outlines the roadmap of Japan-India relations, especially in view of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's forthcoming visit, in an interview with Veeshal Bakshi

What are expectations from the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Japan?

As George W. Bush stepped briskly into the White House for the signing ceremony in the afternoon of October 8, the gathering that included Ronen Sen, India's ambassador to the US, was aware that they were witnessing a rare and historic moment.

Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss couldn't have given a better birthday gift to the father of the nation.

The health of a nation's population is vital for its economic development, prosperity and internal stability. In India, investments to build the country's social fabric, in particular, healthcare and education are especially critical, as India is projected to become the world's most populous country by 2035.

Societies have always searched for an ideology and an institutional framework to balance collective and private interests. In the last century, this struggle played out as a confrontation between two clearly defined ideologies

Rivers, known as mother rivers in many local to regional languages, dialects and cultural idioms, are known as bedrocks of civilisation. River valley populations in the hilly gorges are thus civilisations within our larger civilisation.

The one big change that India requires urgently and in large measure is for the population to develop a deep reverence for nature. Indian culture and our traditional beliefs have for ages ensured that nature and its bounty are treated with profound respect and value.

They call it the elixir of life but with changing times, water has also become a driving force in economic activities, traditionally in agriculture, and now increasingly in the industry.

No wonder, there has been a tendency to take for granted the availability of water and show scant responsibility to the understanding of the ecological processes that make it available to us.

Cities are as old as settled human history. This is abundantly clear in South Asia, with Harappa and Mohenjodaro being early indigenous examples and Varanasi representing a living embodiment of this tradition.

A revolution on a railway track. It's that straightforward. Engineering a success story for urban India's daily traffic battles is simple. The answer has already presented itself in the Capital through a mass rapid transit system built by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC). It's a blueprint that has to be implemented in the rest of the country.