At GRIPS Forum on January 22, 2024, Ambassador Nirupama Rao, Former Indian Foreign Secretary, gave a lecture titled “INDIA IN THE WORLD TODAY”.

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Abstract:

Historical experience shapes India’s view of the world. This is of course layered by geopolitical considerations, and the country’s growing aspiration to be a leading global power. India believes in upholding a multipolar world order, in contrast to one dominated by one single hegemon or a single superpower. Its global approach is conditioned by strategic autonomy, and behavior that engages with multiple power points and regional blocs in order to promote and protect its national interest. Military alliances have been strictly abjured so far, as also entanglement in power rivalries. In the conduct of the country’s foreign policy, neighborhood is ‘first’ and foremost. Relations with India’s neighbors have followed a path that is both complex and yet cooperative, seeking more economic integration, secure borders, better connectivity, and above all, regional stability. India has troubled relations however, with two neighbors, Pakistan and China and these cast their long shadows on regional policy and are sources of turbulence that threaten Indian interests. With Pakistan the focus has been on counter-terrorism, and the latter emphasis has expanded into a global advocacy and concerted effort in regional and global forums to build unrelenting support to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.

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Beyond the neighborhood, India has sought and built strong, mutually beneficial relations with its sister democracies like the United States and Japan. These relationships form the bedrock of India’s Indo-Pacific policy today as the region witnesses the rise of China’s military and economic strengths and capabilities in the region, including its attempts to violate territorial borders on land and sea in the Indo-Pacific. Simultaneously, India seeks global governance reform and the reform of multilateral institutions set in a post-WWII global order created in 1945, which it sees as unrepresentative of the interests of the Global South and the aspirations and the rising expectations of the billions who reside there. Today we see how the habitual rivalries and differences between the big powers, and the imposition of the diktats of such power, whether military or economic, on the lives of the peoples of the developing world have only compounded human suffering and the deflection of global priorities and goals away from the aims of equitable and sustainable development and addressing the fall-out of climate change.

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Speaker: Ambassador Nirupama Rao,
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Speakers’ Profile:

Nirupama Rao is a former Indian Foreign Service officer. She retired as Foreign
Secretary to the Government of India, being the second woman to occupy the post (2009-2011). She was the first woman spokesperson (2001-02) of the Indian foreign office. She served as India's first woman High Commissioner (Ambassador) to Sri Lanka (2004-2006) and to the People's Republic of China (2006-2009). She was Ambassador of India to the United States from 2011 to 2013. In retirement she has taught at Brown and Columbia Universities. Her book entitled "The Fractured Himalaya: India Tibet China, 1949 to 1962" was published by Penguin India in October 2021.

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She is a Global Policy Fellow of the Wilson Center, Washington D.C. She was a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow from 2015-2016. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, on the Board of the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations (ICRIER), and a Council Member of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. She has an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from Pondicherry University, India. She is also the Vice-Chairman of Tibet House, New Delhi, the Cultural Center of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

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She is a staunch believer in the power of social media as an advocacy platform for policy and currently has over 1.3 million followers on Twitter.

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Ambassador Rao has received several awards recognizing her contributions in public service including the K.P.S Menon Memorial Award, the Sree Chithira Thirunal Award, the Vanitha Ratna Award of the Government of Kerala and the Citizen Extraordinaire Award of Rotary International. She is also the recipient of the Fellowship of Peace Award of the Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Center in Washington D.C.

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Ambassador Rao is a Founder-Trustee of The South Asian Symphony Foundation (SASF) (www.symphonyofsouthasia.org) - a not-for-profit Trust which is dedicated to promoting mutual understanding through music in South Asia.

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She is currently working on a memoir of her years in China.

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What is GRIPS Forum?

Since its establishment in 1997, the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) has promoted research and education on a wide variety of policy issues. The GRIPS Forum invites specialists from national and local governments as well as academic and business communities to promote policy studies and expand policy networks.