Following the asean Model

Following the ASEAN Model?
The prime minister's visit to Japan earlier this month, though brief and formally for nothing more momentous than the inauguration of the Festival of India in Japan, may turn out to be something of a milestone in the evolution of the government's economic policies. The high point of the visit was not so much Rajiv Gandhi's meeting with the Japanese prime minister as that with a group of Japanese businessmen. There has been no attempt to hide the fact that the meeting had been sought by the Indian prime minister or that its purpose was to cajole the Japanese businessmen to expand their direct investment in the Indian economy. But what lends special significance to the episode is that in economic policy making circles in New Delhi it seems to have been taken as the signal to cast off all inhibition and quite openly project enlargement of foreign private investment as being now a principal objective of the government's economic policies.