India – Netherlands Relations

In News

• India and Netherlands signed four agreements on the sidelines of the Indian President’s state visit to the Netherlands. It is also the first Head of State visit from India to the Netherlands in more than three decades. 

Major Highlights of the meet

• Maritime Transport and Logistics: Extension of MoU on bilateral cooperation in the field of Ports, Maritime Transport and Logistics.
• Shared Cultural Heritage: Extension of MoU with State Archives Department, Kerala and National Archives of Netherlands on the execution of Shared Cultural Heritage.
• Digitizing 17th century archives: MoU for the Cosmos Malabaricus Project between Leiden University and the Kerala Council of Historical Research, National Archives of the Netherlands on digitizing 17th century archives and making them available to Indian and International researchers.
• Biotechnology: Extension of the Programme of Cooperation between the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, Government of Netherlands.

India and Netherlands Relations

• India and Netherlands have long-standing warm and friendly relations based on shared values of democracy, rule of law, respectful human rights and historic bonds of friendship.

Bilateral ties:

• Indo-Dutch contacts go back to more than 400 years and official relations established in 1947, have been cordial and friendly.
• India’s economic growth, its large market, its pool of knowledge workers are of interest to the Netherlands.
• The two countries also share common ideals of democracy, pluralism and the rule of law.
• Bilateral ties have been marked by strong economic and commercial relations
• The Netherlands signed the Framework Agreement of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and became the 64th signatory member country.

Political and Economic Relations:

• In terms of trade and investment, India has strong economic interests in the Netherlands.
• There are over 200 Indian companies operating in the Netherlands.
• The top five sectors attracting FDI equity flows from the Netherlands were the services sector, computer software and hardware, trading, automobile industry and fermentation industries.
• During the financial year, FY 2018-2019 total two-way trade stood at US$6.28 billion.
• The Netherlands was India’s 4th largest trading partner in the EU, after the UK, Germany and Belgium.

Culture and Education:

• In 1985, a Cultural Agreement was signed between the two countries, which provides for cooperation and exchanges in education and science, art and culture.
• An MoU on Cultural Cooperation was signed in 2017.
• The Indian Cultural Centre named “The Gandhi Centre ” in The Hague was inaugurated in 2011.
• The Centre promotes Indian culture through its active calendar of programmes including regular Yoga, Tabla and Hindi classes.
• In addition to this, the Centre organizes a wide range of diverse cultural activities and programmes, such as music, dance, workshops, movies, documentaries, lectures, celebrations of Indian festivals.
• The Fourth International Day of Yoga was celebrated on 18 June 2018 at the Museumplein, Amsterdam.

Diaspora:

• The Netherlands hosts the second-largest Indian Diaspora (after the UK) in Europe and the largest Indian diaspora community on mainland Europe, totalling around 2,35,000 comprising 35,000 Indians and 2,00,000 Suriname-Hindustani community of Indian origin.
• The Indian nationals in the Netherlands broadly comprise businessmen, IT and other professionals and students.
• The Overseas Citizen of India cards have been issued to give status and privileges in many areas.
• To increase the participation of the diaspora youth and familiarize them with Indian youth and their Indian roots, India started the Know India Programme and Scholarship Programme for Diaspora Children for the children of Persons of Indian Origin to join Indian universities for higher education.

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