India and Japan signed a bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation agreement seen as crucial for energy-starved India to access sensitive technologies to generate clean electricity. The pact is a major achievement for India as it is Japan’s first civilian nuclear cooperation pact with a country that has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

• It was inked in Tokyo in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese host Shinzo Abe. Modi is on a three-day visit to Japan for the annual summit between the two prime ministers.
• That it was signed with Abe at the helm of affairs in Japan is also key, given that he has been keen to forge close links with India to counter the rise of China.
• Ties between India and Japan have warmed considerably since Abe returned to office in 2012.
• The deal has been many years in the making because India was reluctant to limit its option to carry out more atomic weapons’ tests—in addition to the ones carried out in 1998—in case the need arose.
• And Japan—being the only country in the world to have suffered the impact of nuclear weapons being dropped on it—was uncomfortable with India having a nuclear weapons programme outside the nuclear non-proliferation regime.