Japan seeks Indian workers amid ageing population, but people-to-people ties lag

Since 1981, when the Suzuki Motor Corporation set up a factory in India to manufacture the “Maruti” car, the Japanese company has been a byword for bilateral ties, Kenichi Ayukawa, Executive Vice President and Chief Global Marketing Officer, who headed Maruti Suzuki operations in India from 2013 to 2022, says.

Suzuki was among the first to bring Japanese engineers to India to streamline processes and train Indian workers to build the car. With both Delhi and Tokyo seeking solutions to Japan’s ageing population and India’s burgeoning youth population, the company is now reversing that trend.

“Suzuki is now trying to invite a lot of Indians to Japan, training them and helping them develop technology in Japan,” Mr. Ayukawa said, accompanied by Indian scholar and Suzuki executive Chandrali Sarkar. Ms. Sarkar first came to Japan to study at Keio University and has worked on India operations at Suzuki’s Hamamatsu headquarters, about 250 km from Tokyo, since 2022. She noted that while some hesitation among Indians stems from limited Japanese language skills, the broader challenge is unfamiliarity with Japan.

“Japan should know more about India and vice versa. Especially the next generation needs to connect, and we need more Indian students, engineers, professionals to come to Japan,” said Kenji Hiramatsu, Chairman of the Institute for International Strategy at The Japan Research Institute (JRI), and Japan’s ambassador to India from 2015 to 2019. “It is important that we change the mindset of Indian youth that Japan is a special partner for India,” he added, noting that the current number of Indians studying in Japan is far below its potential.

According to a parliamentary response from the Indian Ministry of Education last year, Japan ranks 34th among countries where Indian students pursue higher education. Only about 1,500 Indian students are currently registered in Japan, a small fraction of more than 3,30,000 foreign students in the country. Employment figures are similarly modest: about 54,000 Indians work in Japan, one-fourth of the 2,33,000 Nepali citizens among a total of 2.3 million foreign workers.

To address this shortfall, Japan is preparing to open its doors to thousands like Ms. Sarkar under an “Action Plan” launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in August. The plan aims to facilitate 500,000 workforce exchanges over the next five years, including the movement of 50,000 skilled personnel from India to Japan.

Officials in the Cabinet Secretariat and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs point to the “perfect complementarity” between the two countries. Japan, with one-third of its population over the age of 65, requires a workforce, academics for research, and a market for its goods. India, with 65% of its 1.4 billion population under 35, faces rising pressure to create opportunities for its youth amid stricter immigration policies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and Chinese restrictions on high-tech and semiconductor exports.

Despite decades of growing government-to-government and business-to-business ties, the officials said, people-to-people connections between India and Japan continue to lag.