Modi invites Dutch companies to design, innovate and manufacture in India

By Deepak Arora

THE HAGUE, May 16: On the first day of his visit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday met King of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima at the Royal Palace and discussed close cooperation in digital technology, innovation, fintech and blue economy.

Modi also held wide-ranging talks with his Dutch counterpart Rob Jetten, focusing on trade, investment, and critical technologies.

Ahead of the bilateral talks, Modi, along with Jetten, held discussions with prominent CEOs of leading Dutch companies across various sectors such as energy, ports, health, agriculture trade, and technology, among others.

Modi invited Dutch companies to explore opportunities in India, particularly in maritime, renewable energy, digital technologies, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and healthcare sectors.

“We are continuously reducing compliance and increasing the ease of doing business. We have recently carried out next-generation reforms in taxation, labour code, and governance,” he told the business leaders.

The Prime Minister added that manufacturing in India is becoming very cost-effective, and in the services sector, it has become the engine of efficiency and innovation.

The Prime Minister said today’s India is a symbol of scale and stability, and no country in the world can match its speed in infrastructure, clean energy, and connectivity.

This is why India is contributing 17% to global growth, the Prime Minister said.

The Ministry of External Affairs said “The India-Netherlands partnership has grown in strategic sectors, including technology, innovation, defence, security, semiconductors, renewable energy, education and the maritime domain.”

Meanwhile, Electronics manufacturing company Tata Electronics and Dutch semiconductor equipment major ASML have joined hands to enable chip manufacturing in India, a joint statement said on Saturday.

ASML is known for having monopoly in a category of lithography equipment which is critical for production of advance small size semiconductors.

Modi warns of ‘return of massive poverty’, flags ‘disaster decade’ of Covid, wars, fuel crisis

THE HAGUE, May 16: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered one of his starkest warnings yet about the state of the global economy on Saturday, telling the Indian diaspora in the Netherlands that decades of hard-won progress against poverty stood at serious risk if the world's cascading crises were not urgently reversed.

"The world is dealing with new challenges," he said, speaking at a community event in The Hague during the second leg of his five-nation European tour.

In light of ongoing conflicts, particularly in the oil-rich West Asian region after the US and Israel's attacks on Iran, Modi described the present decade as a period of compounding catastrophe.

“First came the corona (virus) pandemic; then wars began to break out, and now there is an energy crisis. This decade is turning into a decade of disasters for the world,” he explained, speaking in Hindi.

He issued a pointed warning about the consequences of inaction. If these situations are not rapidly changed, he said, “achievements of the past many decades would be washed away, and a huge section of the world's population would be pushed back into poverty".

The remarks came at a moment of acute economic anxiety across India, West Asia, and beyond.

Netherlands hands back Chola dynasty copper plates to India

THE HAGUE, May 16: The Netherlands on Saturday handed back 11th-century Chola dynasty copper plates to India, in an event attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, signifying the strengthening of ties between the two countries.

India has been pursuing the return of the Anaimangalam Copper Plates, known in the Netherlands as the Leiden Plates, since 2012.

The 21 copper plates are considered the most significant surviving records of the Chola dynasty and are among the important artefacts of Tamil heritage held anywhere outside India. The copper plates, belonging to the times of Rajaraja Chola I, weigh approximately 30 kilograms and are bound together by a bronze ring bearing the royal seal of the Chola dynasty.