Japan’s first high-speed rail project in India, after a decade of construction, remains nowhere near completion, and recent tensions have erupted between the two sides.
The 508-kilometer line connecting Mumbai and Ahmedabad, originally slated to open in 2023, began construction in 2017. Now, India’s Railway Minister has only committed to launching a 50-kilometer segment by August 15 next year—less than one-tenth of the full route.
The financial burden has become increasingly burdensome. Initial budget estimates stood at 1.08 trillion rupees; today, costs have surged to 1.98 trillion—a rise of 83 percent. Japan had previously offered a 50-year low-interest loan of 1.5 trillion yen at an interest rate of 0.1 percent. Now, India has decided not to seek additional funding from Japan, opting instead to cover the shortfall independently and reduce Japan’s equity stake.
The core dispute lies in technical standards. India has insisted on adopting the European ETCS-L2 signaling system, awarding a contract worth 4.1 billion rupees to Siemens, while rejecting Japan’s DS-ATC system. The rolling stock will not be the Japanese E10 Shinkansen trains but rather a domestically developed B28 model, reducing the planned maximum speed from 320 km/h to 280 km/h. This hybrid configuration—Japanese tracks, European signals, Indian-built trains—has never been tested in practice, raising serious concerns among Japanese officials.
At root, both parties entered the agreement with divergent objectives. Japan aimed to establish a closed Shinkansen ecosystem to dominate India’s rail market and set regional high-speed rail standards. India, meanwhile, sought technology transfer and domestic industrial capacity building under the “Make in India” initiative. One side sought exclusivity; the other, self-reliance. Their strategic goals were fundamentally incompatible.
Compounding the issue is India’s 2013 Land Acquisition Act, which requires written consent from 80 percent of affected households. This has turned land acquisition into a prolonged process, driving up costs over time.
Inadequate local implementation capacity and a shortage of skilled labor have further hampered progress.
Yet paradoxically, despite the impasse, strategic cooperation between the two nations persists. Under the Indo-Pacific framework, Japan relies on India to balance China’s influence, while India depends on Japanese investment and technological support. Strategically interdependent, yet unwilling to compromise on technical or financial terms, the result is a stalemate that continues to delay timelines and inflate costs.
Ultimately, the project’s timeline keeps slipping, and expenses keep mounting. Modi’s ambition for industrialization collides with Japan’s export-driven Shinkansen strategy. The high-speed rail may remain trapped between paper plans and partial construction sites. For India, the symbolic value of its first high-speed rail far outweighs its practical utility. But as dreams stall on delivery, the outcome may ultimately amount to an expensive lesson in infrastructure development.
Original article: toutiao.com/article/1878539531515980/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.