Arnab Dasgupta

Dr. Arnab Dasgupta is a Research Analyst at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), New Delhi. His areas of research includes India-Japan relations, Japanese domestic politics and policy studies, human security and demographics.

Dr. Dasgupta holds a MA in Japanese language from the Centre for Japanese Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and is certified N1 in the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT).He has completed his MPhil from the Centre for East Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and his dissertation was on “The Immigration Policy of Japan: The Control and Integration of Migrants 2000-2012”.He has completed his PhD from the Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. His doctoral thesis focused on the “Teleologies of Immigration Policy of Japan: Interpretations by Civil Society and the State’’. He received his Doctoral Degree in February 2020.

Dr. Dasgupta has been awarded fellowships for his research by both the governments of India and Japan, and was the 2017-18 Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellow for Japanese Studies from India, under which he was a Visiting Researcher at the National Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo. He has been published in several academic journals and web portals. He has previously worked in language education as well as translation fields before joining MP-IDSA.


Research Analyst

Publication

Africa’s Quest for Modernity: Lessons from Japan and China

The volume under review draws from noted scholar Ali Mazrui’s definition of modernisation, which integrates epistemic advancements with capability-based arguments. It looks to East and Southeast Asia as models for Africa’s development. As he states in his introduction, Africa ‘has to be able to conscript both China and Japan’ in service of its developmental goals (p. 5). He argues that ‘Africa can partner with China and learn from Japan’ while being cognisant of the diversity of developmental paths in East and Southeast Asia.