Ambernath man eyes Japan poll comeback

Mumbai: Bouncing from Thane’s Ambernath town to Pune to Japan’s political arena, Dr. Yogendra (Yogi) Puranik who created history in 2019 as the first Indian-origin Japanese lawmaker is now preparing for an encore in next month’s Prefecture (state assembly) elections there.

It was eight years ago (April 2019) that Yogi, 49 as he is known among the Japanese was first elected to Tokyo’s Edogawa City Assembly equivalent to a Member of a State Legislative Assembly in India as an Independent, supported by the Constitutional Democratic Party.

“However, before completing my full 4-year term, I quit after three years when I detected certain major financial scams there,” smiled Yogi, with an extraordinary track record as a teacher, academician, banker, linguist, bureaucrat, author, columnist and politician, who prepares to fight the upcoming elections on Dec. 13, in a bid to return to public life.

Yogi, who was proficient in Japanese (and German) language after a course in Pune, came to the Land of Rising Sun as a wide-eyed student with great expectations, and eventually embraced Japanese Citizenship in 2012. His political debut came quite unexpectedly in April 2019 when he was elected to Edogawa City Assembly in Tokyo with the help of CDP, to become a pioneering Indian-origin voice in Japanese politics, making him the darling of not only the Indian diaspora but also winning the trust of the Japanese people.

Though he resigned after three years, Yogi took up other challenging routes. In 2022, appeared for Japan’s civic services examinations and served as Secretary, Education Department of Ibaraki Prefecture (state).

“Democracy is safe in Japan. The hallmarks of Japanese are: Honesty, Integrity and Discipline. All people may not be well-off, almost 30 pc live in below-poverty-line conditions and struggle for one meal daily. But their values make them unique,” Yogi told The Perfect Voice in a free-wheeling chat from Tokyo. Preparing for the polls again as an Independent from the Tsuchiura City Constituency, of Ibaraki Prefecture (state) in Kanto region, Yogi’s agenda revolves around improving the daily lives of the Japanese ‘aam aadmi’. The real challenge is to evolve better plans, strategies and programmes and strengthen existing policies, he explained.

With a total population of around 12.50 cr. (equal to Maharashtra), the biggest concerns are Japan’s rapidly ageing population and declining birth rate - a sharply shrinking workforce, acute shortage of skilled labour and growing anxiety among younger couples about starting families amid stagnant incomes.

Healthcare is the next, particularly the shortage of doctors in rural areas as medical professionals gravitate towards urban centres like Tokyo, a comprehensive overhaul of the country’s education system  “syllabi have remained largely unchanged since World War II despite Japan’s global leadership in robotics and hi-tech.