Netherlands envoy Marisa Gerards calls yellow tulip symbol of friendship between India, Netherlands

Speaking to ANI, Gerards recalled that New Delhi and Netherlands teamed up to plant tulips in the city around the G20 Summit held in 2023 and did it again last year. Notably, the G20 Summit was held under India's presidency in September 2023.

On Tulip festival in Delhi, Marisa Gerards said, "Well, I arrived in India, 1.5 years ago and I could see around the G20, that the Netherlands and the city of Delhi that we teamed up to plant the tulips in the city to celebrate and we did it again last year. And when I saw how well the tulips are growing, I said, we should actually also include residence of the Dutch ambassador and also plant tulips here. So, that's what we did this year, plant tulips here. It was a bit scary to see if it could really work, but I think it does and we planted some tulips outside as well for the public to see and to join in the celebration of spring that's coming and clean air."

Calling tulips symbol of friendship between India and Netherlands, she said, "We baptised this special friendship tulip, the yellow ones, together with your Former President when he was in the Netherlands for state visit in 2022. So, that tulip is a symbol of the friendship between our two countries, so that's very special. But, many tulips have a specific name or are named after someone or have some significance, and that makes it even more beautiful, I think."

Stressing that ties between India and Netherlands are "very strong", Marisa Gerards recalled that Netherlands opened first embassy in Delhi in 1948. She said that two nations will sign a strategic partnership and Prime Ministers of both nations have spoken about it.

On bilateral ties. Netherlands envoy said, "It's a very strong relationship. We were one of the first countries who recognised the Independence. This has been the residents of the Dutch ambassador since '52 already. We opened our embassy already in 48, so there's a lot going on. There's a lot going on in the different sectors of water management, health, energy, climate, agriculture, innovation, of course, that's the core I think of our cooperation. And this year we're going to sign a strategic partnership. Our two prime ministers talked about it so that we can work a little bit more also on security, on the semiconductor ecosystem that we would like to connect. So, there's a lot going on also on culture, by the way, and people to people, people studying in the Netherlands and I'm a lucky person."

She also spoke about Indian diaspora living in the Netherlands and called people-to-people ties "strong". She said that Netherlands is small in terms of number of people but they are doing a lot of innovation.

She said, "You should know that we're small in the number of people, but that we're big in a few of these sectors and that we do a lot of innovation and that's where we can find each other. But, also I think people to people, I think there's a strong relationship. We have quite a diaspora in our country. They are the first in the whole of the European Union, which is because lots of Indians go to the Netherlands to study or to work there, but there's also the diaspora that came through Suriname, so we know each other and we we really like each other. So, that's really fine." (ANI)