A Comparison and Analysis of Japanese Official Development Assistance to India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, 2000-2019

The countries of the Indian subcontinent have been long-term recipients of Japan's of ficial development assistance (ODA), ranking in importance only after Southeast Asia.Yet scholarship on the contents of Japan's aid to these countries is uneven.Bangladesh, a consistent aid recipient since national independence, is well researched, aid to India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka has not been as well documented.This article helps to close that gap in the research by providing an overview of sectoral and geographic distributions of Japanese ODA in the three countries from 2000 to 2019.Section 2 surveys the current state of research on Japan's ODA to the three countries.Section 3 presents the research methodology.Section 4 tracks changes in allocations by aid modality over the period, examines sectoral distributions of aid by modality in each country, and then does the same for geographic distribution of aid projects in each country.Section 5 concludes the research. Literature ReviewJapan's official development assistance has experienced an uneven history in the Indian subcontinent.India was Japan's first foreign aid recipient, in 1958, but aid declined during the Cold War as relations between the two grew distant Varma 2010;Jain 2017.Japan suspended aid to India in 1998 following India's testing of nuclear weapons.Pakistan's relations with Japan have also been troubled by the former's policy of nuclear weapons development.Yet both re-emerged as important aid recipients after 2000.In the twenty-first century India has reemerged as a top-ten recipient of Japanese aid, and