Post #16: Japan: An inspiration for us

        For India, its high time to learn many things from Japan. What and why should we learn, I'll explain it in the next few paragraphs. But in the beginning, I want to say that we typical Indians do not forget the things so easily and we keep on complaining like anything without knowing the consequences. I wonder if these things are in our genes or traits. Anyways lets know about Japan.

      Japan,an East Asian country, aka "Land of the Rising Sun". Japanese people call themselves   'Nihonjin' and they called their language 'Nihongo'. It consists of 6852 islands,out of these only 4 major islands Honshu,Hokkaido,Kyushu and Shikoku occupy 97% of country's land. It has a total area of 3,77,944 square km which places Japan at the 62nd place in the list. Japan has only 0.8% of water available on the planet Earth.Tokyo is the capital city of Japan.

        Japan is having 73% forested,mountainous,hilly terrain,rigid,unsuitable,unproductive land for agriculture,industrial or residential use. Most of the islands are located in a volcanic zone on the pacific ring of fire. There are 108 active volcanoes, full of destructive earthquakes often resulting in Tsunami,disastrous floods,several times each century. No Iron Ore,No coal,No petroleum,No metals or non metals, Nothing in the name of Natural resources. They only have dedication,rich culture, healthy work environment and they work over 18 hours a day.

       If we talk about population,Japan is the 10th largest country of the world having 126 million people (though earlier it was 128 million, there is drastic decline in the population). It is one of the most densely populated country of the world,most of the population are living in coastal area. In 2009,22.7% of population was over 65 years of age. Experts are saying that Japan,in 2050, will have 40% of over 65 years old age population. Tokyo alone has 30 million of Japan's population.

          Achievements of Japan which we all should appreciate and learn from it: 

• Japan is the 3rd largest Economy( by nominal GDP $5.228 trillion) and the 4th largest Economy(by Purchasing power parity GDP $4.866 trillion) of the world.
• The 4th largest exporter as well as importer in the world. It has 5th largest military budget but used only for self defense and peacekeeping roles,as according to Japanese constitution of 1947 it has no right to declare a war or use force against any country in any international dispute.
• The 3rd largest (after US & France) donor of official development assistance($ 9.48 billion in 2009). Japan invests over $200 billion in China whereas in India only $13-14 billion. 
• Japanese women have the 2nd highest life expectancy, according to United Nations it has the 3rd lowest infant mortality rate(IMR)
• Japan is one of the smallest tax revenues of the developed world, in terms of Ease of doing Business japan stands at 12th out of 178 countries. It is the home to 326 companies from Forbes global 2000.
• Japan's 7,00,000 researchers share a whopping $130 billion R&D budget which is the 3rd largest in the world and also a world leader in fundamental Scientific Research.
• It alone has produced 16 Nobel laureates in Physics,Chemistry & Medicine, 3 Fileds medalists and 1 Gauss prize laureate.
• Being a leader in robotics use and processing,it has 402,000 robots out of 7,42,500 world's industrial robots and there are still many things to enlist here. But these are enough to think over it.

       In a nutshell,Despite having so much of difficulties,Japan is successful in achieving which India in spite of having everything is not able to achieve even 1/10th of what Japan has achieved. Have you ever seen that Japan is complaining about Hiroshima,Nagasaki atomic disaster? Have you ever seen Japan is complaining about not having any natural resources, about unproductive lands, about natural disaster they face time and again? Never,at least I haven't seen. And we typical Indians keep on complaining that Britishers looted our wealth,India was a golden bird, because of this we are poor,Friends it has been so long. We had poor monsoon rain this year,we had this, we had that...forget about all these,stop complaining and move ahead. Learn how Japanese have developed themselves,learn from their work culture. India has everything which is required for becoming a developed country,India has more than enough money to employ maximum of its citizen,to fund R&D and to come on top of the list. 

(Facts and figures taken from wiki)