Dr. R K Chadha
Besides energy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Netherlands via Abu Dhabi during his 5-nation tour in May 2026 underscores India’s push for the semiconductor and water management sectors. The Netherlands visit is of particular interest with regard to its uniqueness and advancement in these sectors. First, about semiconductors.
The Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography (ASML) company in the Netherlands holds a global monopoly on manufacturing the photolithography machines required for the production of semiconductor microchips. The global semiconductor industry is expected to cross 1 trillion dollars this year. India’s share is likely to breach 100 billion dollars in the next couple of years, driven by the aggressive domestic chip fabrication and designing under the India Semiconductor Mission.
Semiconductors: At the core of the digital world we live in today are semiconductors. All of us are familiar with our cell phone SIM (Subscriber Identity Module). Beneath the visible gold metal contact lies a tiny microprocessor equipped with its own CPU, the brain, RAM, a short-term memory, and a flash memory, the godown or storehouse of all data, used to authenticate the identity on mobile networks. This integrated circuit is etched on a silicon wafer thin, ultra-flat disk made of pure crystalline material that serves as the “blank canvas” for building microchips that power our daily technology. Silicon wafer thin slices are produced from highly purified silicon from quartz sands that is melted and grown into a large, solid cylinder called an ingot that resembles a giant metallic salami. This cylinder is then sliced by a diamond wire saw into incredibly thin disks producing silicon wafers.
Why Silicon? Let me explain. For example, a copper wire is a standard conductor of electricity that allows current to flow, and a plastic (Polyvinyl Chloride) or rubber is a non-conductor or an insulator that blocks the current flow. That is why our electric wires are covered with different coloured plastic coatings to avoid shocks. On the contrary, silicon is a semiconductor, meaning it has both the properties to either allow or block the current flow. It is a smart switch that can turn on and off millions of times per second to process data. For example, think of electricity as cars and a semiconductor as a traffic light signal at a busy city intersection. By switching lights from green to yellow to red, it directs exactly when and where the electricity should flow, ensuring smooth traffic throughout the day.
Microprocessors: Microprocessors are precisely manufactured by etching microscopic circuit patterns onto a semiconductor that has a CPU (Central Processing Unit) as its brain. The software that is written in human-readable language (a source code) like Python, C++, or Java is converted into machine language in a binary sequence of 1s and 0s by specialized software called compilers. This binary sequence is stored in the hard drive or loaded into RAM (Random Access Memory) as an executable file with an extension .exe. It is the job of the CPU to fetch these binary instructions and feed them directly into its internal circuitry to process data.
The internal circuitry is etched on a silicon microchip made up of billions of microscopic switches called transistors. The transistors are like light switches in our homes that can either be ON, allowing current to flow and corresponding to 1, or OFF, stopping current flow and corresponding to 0 in the binary sequence. This way, instructions stored in a binary sequence that represent all data are read to execute a job. To give a simple analogy, think of a transistor as a tap that is connected to an overhead water tank and to a drainage system at its two ends through pipes. The tap decides how much water gets through, and the drainage decides where the water will go. In a similar way in an integrated electronic circuit, a transistor is simply an electronically controlled tap for the flow of electricity.
Having explained the basics, let me come back to the critical and important role of the ASML company in the semiconductor industry. This is the only company in the world that is capable of manufacturing Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, which can etch billions of microscopic pathways of circuitry onto silicon wafers to produce advanced microchips. In some special cases of AI microchips like Cerebras WSE-3, over 4 trillion transistors are packed in the circuitry. Lithography is basically a pattern-transfer technique using a mask and in case of EUV lithography, a high-powered laser beam of EUV is used for etching. This technology is like a “photocopier” at nanoscale that is roughly 10,000 times thinner than a single human hair.
Despite the best efforts, even the topmost competitors like Nikon and Canon or any other company in the world has not yet been successful to keep up with the technological advances at the ASML hub in the Netherlands. This has left the chip manufacturing industry heavily dependent on this Dutch company for the supply of machinery that requires over 15 billion dollars to set up. China is trying to copy the ASML technology while investing billions in its own chip-manufacturing programs to rival those of Taiwan. But Chinese products are typical Chinese in terms of its durability and performance; the famous belief “Chinese Maal” has some truth in it. In this context, Narendra Modi’s visit to the Netherlands underlines a serious effort of the government to push the semiconductor industry in India
Now, let me come to the second issue of water. Modi’s visit to the iconic Afsluitdijk dam, a 32 km long sea dam on the shores of the North Sea, is very significant. The dam constructed on one arm of the Atlantic Ocean created the Ijsselmeer reservoir, transforming the salty water of the ocean into a freshwater lake. The Netherlands is truly a unique country because ~30% of its territory is below sea level, where more than 9 million people live in areas that sit naturally underwater. Rather than just building higher barriers or abandoning the area, the Dutch have adopted a philosophy of “living with water” by creating designated flood zones, creating a multi-layered system of dikes, dunes, dams and pumping stations utilizing natural sand motors and expanding floating architecture.
A cooperation with the Netherlands will greatly help India in long-term water management, flood control, inland waterways, freshwater storage with modern technology and renewable energy generation. The semiconductor industry requires large amounts of water to produce microchips. The daily average requirement of a large semiconductor factory is about ~75 lakh to 2 crore litres of ultra-pure water to support the production. India’s Ministry of Jal Shakti and the Netherlands’ Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management has signed a Letter of Intent to fast-track Gujarat’s most ambitious Kalpasar project across the Gulf of Khambhat on the shores of the Arabian Sea tapping into Dutch expertise in marine barriers and climate resilience. The Kalpasar is a dream project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, envisioned when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.
Since, it is one of its kind and a novel project on a massive scale requiring construction of a ~30 km sea dam connecting Ghogha in Bhavnagar and Hansot in Bharuch districts, it is taking a lot of time on the drawing board. This project will now pick up pace with Dutch collaboration. When completed Kalpasar will be one of the world’s largest freshwater coastal reservoirs that will store 10 to 13 billion cubic meters of freshwater, a boon to irrigation as well as semiconductor fabrication plants in the vicinity. Gujarat has firmly established itself as the semiconductor hub of India, hosting multiple major fabrication (fab) and packaging (OSAT) plants at Dholera (Tata Electronics Fab, Crystal Matrix Limited), Sanand (Micron Technology, Kaynes Semicon, CG Power OSAT), and Surat (Suchi Semicon).
To conclude, I reiterate the significance of Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the Netherlands, which will give a great boost to the twin sectors of semiconductors and water management that are interlinked. These sectors are crucial for India as they form the very foundation of modern technology, powering everything from smartphones and automobiles to defence and AI. With domestic chip fabrication and designing, fabs are coming up at several places in Gujarat, Assam, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Noida, India aims to reduce its reliance on imports, secure its technological sovereignty, and anchor global electronics manufacturing. It is a long and arduous journey that India has to take up. Global chip shortages experienced in 2022, post-COVID-19 pandemic, highlight how a lack of domestic chip fabrication can severely stall local assembly lines.
So, dream big, as the future belongs only to those who dare to dream. If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.
