IRC 2018 - SESSION I

Chair

Mr. Shakti Sinha

Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi

Mr. Shakti Sinha was a member of the Indian Administrative Service from 1979 to 2013, when he took VRS. He has held positions at different levels at the union, provincial and local levels, including as private secretary/ joint secretary to prime minister ( AB Vajpayee), head of Delhi's power utility, finance secretary in Delhi provincial government, chief secretary of the Andaman government and others. Internationally, he headed the United Nation's governance & development team in Afghanistan (2006-09) coordinating donor support to the Afghan government, and was earlier Senior Advisor to India's Executive Director on the World Bank board (2000-2004).

He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of National Security Studies Sri Lanka (INSSSL), Colombo.

He has worked at think tanks in India (Director, India Foundation; Visiting Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation) and Singapore (Research Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies) and edited three books, written many book chapters, working papers, policy briefs, columns etc. on political economy of India, Indian foreign policy & strategic affairs, governance, Chinese economy and politics, and on Afghanistan, for global and Indian publications.

Speakers

Dr. Michel Liebig

Fellow and Lecturer, Department of Political Science, South Asia Institute (SAI),
University of Heidelberg, Germany

Dr. Michael Liebig got his PhD at Goethe University, Frankfurt.

His research and teaching focuses on the relevance on endogenous, pre-modern intellectual resources for politico-strategic thought and practices in contemporary India.

His most recent publication: Mitra, S., & Liebig, M. (2017). Kautilya's Arthshastra: An Intellectual Portrait- The Classical Roots of Modern Indian Politics. New Delhi: Rupa

Amb (Retd.) Sujatha Singh

Former Foreign Secretary of India

Ambassador Sujatha Singh joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1976.

In the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, she has served as Under Secretary at Headquarters dealing with Nepal (82-85), Director of the Economic Coordination Unit created in the Ministry after India's economic reforms in (92-94), Joint Secretary in the Foreign Service Institute(96-97), and Joint Secretary dealing with West Europe(2004-07).

She has served in Indian Missions in Germany, Ghana, France, Thailand, Italy, and Australia. She has been Deputy Chief of Mission in Bangkok and India's DPR to ESCAP(1997-2000), India's Consul General in Milan (2000-2004), India's High Commissioner to Australia (2007-12) and Ambassador to Germany (2012-13).

She returned to Headquarters in July 2013 to serve as Foreign Secretary till she retired in end January 2015. Since retirement she has been working with NGOs teaching young children.

Mr. Manoj Kewalramani

Associate Fellow-China Studies at The Takshashila Institution

Mr. Manoj Kewalraman's current research focuses on Chinese politics, foreign policy and approaches to new technologies. He has also designed and teaches a special short-duration course on China, as part of Takshashila's policy school programs. In addition, he curates a weekly brief, Eye on China, which tracks developments in China from an Indian perspective.

Prior to joining Takshashila, he spent 11 years working as a journalist in India and China, where he also helped set up digital newsrooms and train young journalists.

His work has been published by many media outlets, including NDTV, WION, Al-Jazeera, CGTN and The Diplomat.

Dr. A Didar Singh

Former Secretary General, FICCI

Dr. A. Didar Singh, author and former civil servant (IAS) served as Secretary to Government of India from 2009 to 2011 and as Secretary General (from 2012 to 2017) of India's largest apex business chamber, FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry).

He is presently Senior Fellow at the Delhi Policy Group and at the Society for Development Studies, Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Dr Singh also functions as Chair of the Diaspora group of KNOMAD (Knowledge Network on Migration), of the World Bank and in 2017 was named as Global Fellow at IC2 Institute of the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He is presently a Commissioner of the ILOs 'Global Commission on the Future of Work' (2017-19).

Dr. Singh has four books and several publications to his credit and has given talks and lectures in over 30 Institutions and Countries around the world