Indians Taking Up Farming in Japan, Nursing in Germany

They Upskill at Govt-Backed Agency to Take on Better-Paying Jobs Abroad

- Debarshi Dasgupta

NEW DELHI - Photographs of Kyoto's Kiyomizu-dera temple and Mount Fuji in central Honshu line a wall in a large, airy classroom.

Here, more than 20 young Indian men have their gaze trained on beginner-level Japanese language workbooks.

Their teacher walks around the room, randomly quizzing them on the Japanese equivalents for basic English words. "Factory," she asks a student, to which he responds correctly, "koujou."

Picking up Japanese language skills quickly here could prove to be a game changer for these young graduates in their 20s desperate for a professional breakthrough.

Those who clear a pre-screening Japanese language test later in March stand a chance to be recruited as farmers in Japan.

Compared with a monthly salary of 30,000 rupees (S$460) or less as construction or factory workers in India, they could earn 160,000 yen (S$1,436) each month as farm workers in Japan.

Among the students at the recently inaugurated government-backed NSDC International Academy in Greater Noida, a city near Delhi, is Mr Prabhat Tiwari, a 29-year-old with an entrepreneurial spirit.

A trained engineer with two degrees in civil engineering, he was stuck in low-paying jobs in India's construction sector. Now, he is following his father's footsteps in a farming career.

He plans to eventually set up an agricultural start-up with the farming experience he hopes to pick up overseas. "I don't think I will get a better place to learn modern high-tech farming than in Japan," he said.

Japan and some European nations are among several developed countries with ageing populations and labour shortages that are increasingly turning to India's large young talent pool to meet their demand for workers.