NEW DELHI: The Japanese government is keen on increasing its intake of students from India, and is facilitating greater academic collaboration between the two countries. Hakubun Shimomura , minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology visited India last week on the sidelines of the annual Japan Education fair , which was attended by 1,300 Indian students. Representatives from nine Japanese universities and one Japanese language school had participated in the fair to reach out to Indian students and emphasise courses that are also taught in English.There are about 560 Indian students in Japan. The number is very small unlike countries like the US, says Takeshi Yagi, ambassador of Japan to India. "We are keen to expand the flow, and are taking new measures like appointing a study in Japan coordinator and fostering partnerships between universities. Starting this fiscal year, some extra budgets have also been allocated," he adds.Japanese embassy officials said the government has set aside a budget of 100 million yen (around Rs 6 crore) for deploying ‘Study in Japan Coordinator’ in three countries including India. It has a budget of 350 million yen (around Rs 20 crore ) for supporting academic partnership programmes between Japanese and Indian universities."We have four priority areas for the exchange students: engineering, social sciences, medical sciences and agriculture. The new Indian prime minister does place a lot of importance on Japan. Student exchange programmes should get a boost under the new regime," says Yagi.Shimomura met with his Indian counterpart, HRD minister Smriti Zubin Irani . In meetings between the two, he mentioned that the Japanese government had a plan to double both foreign students in Japan (to 300,000 from 140,000) and Japanese students studying abroad (to 120,000 from 60,000) by 2020.