INDIA & THE NETHERLANDS
A relationship dating back to the early 16th century
The India–Netherlands relations date back to the early 16th century as far as 1605 when the Dutch entered the Mughal Empire for trading purposes. Since then bilateral trade between India and Netherlands continued to gather momentum.
India and the Netherlands are long-term partners in international research collaboration.
The bilateral cooperation is based on an overarching government-to-government MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) between the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy in The Netherlands and the Ministry of Science & Technology in India. A Joint Working Committee is responsible for steering the cooperation through strategic discussions on the future of the Indian-Dutch R&D collaboration, the overall strategic orientation and safeguarding the coherence.
LOTUSHR is an excellent example of combining Indian low cost innovation with the Dutch multi-disciplinary approach where the aim is.
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) India collaborate together in the ‘Local Treatment of Urban Sewage Streams for Healthy Reuse’ (LOTUSHR) programme. This collaboration is a good showcase of the ‘Golden Triangle’ or Triple Helix model where government, academia and industry / private sector are working together to come up with an innovative technology and transfer it to the market.
