Nirupama Rao

Introduction

Ambassador (Retired) Nirupama Rao is a Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.

A career diplomat, Ambassador Rao was Indian Foreign Secretary from 2009 to 2011. She was the Official Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (2001-02), High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka (2004-06), Ambassador of India to the People’s Republic of China (2006-09) – the first Indian woman to serve in all these posts. On retirement, she was Ambassador of India to the United States (US) from 2011 to 2013. 

During her long diplomatic career, Ambassador Rao specialised in India’s neighbourhood policy and was also widely recognised as an expert on India’s relations with China, particularly border policy and the India-China boundary question. She also developed considerable expertise in communication and media strategy and was a pioneer in using social media as a connector to audiences across India and the world on the country’s foreign policy. 

In retirement, Ambassador Rao taught at Brown and Columbia Universities and was a Public Policy Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington DC She was also a Fellow at the India China Institute at the New School in New York and a Pacific Fellow at the University of California at San Diego. She has delivered lectures at various US universities including at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Clara, Claremont McKenna College, Harvard, Mills College and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, among others. 

Ambassador Rao is the author of The Fractured Himalaya; India Tibet China 1949 to 1962, a history of the India-China relationship (Penguin Random House, 2021) and Rain Rising, a collection of poems (Rupa & Co. 2004). She has contributed chapters to Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror (Lakshman Kadirgamar on the Foundations of International Order) Adam Roberts (Anthology Editor), Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019); 30 Women in Power, Their Voices, Their Stories, Naina Lal Kidwai Editor, Rupa, 2015; and The Fourth Lion Essays for Gopalkrishna Gandhi, edited by Venu Madhav Govindu and Srinath Raghavan, Aleph Book Company, 2021. Her essays have appeared in The Economist, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Wilson Quarterly, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, Times of India, Mint, The Tribune and Deccan Herald, among others. She has been interviewed on CNN, BBC, Channel News Asia, Doordarshan (India), NDTV (India) and many other news channels. Her following on the social media handle X is now 1.3 million. 

She is the founder-trustee of the South Asian Symphony Foundation, an institution dedicated to building bridges between musicians across national borders and which has created the South Asian Symphony Orchestra, which today has members from over 14 countries, including from Singapore. 

Ambassador Rao is a member of the Court and the Council of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and a Trustee of the International Crisis Group. She is a member of the Board of the Indian Council for Research in International Economic Relations and the Vice-Chair of Tibet House, the Cultural Centre of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, New Delhi.

Areas of Interest and Expertise

• Indo-Pacific Strategy, Security and Regional Cooperation
• India-China Relations
• India-US Relations
• India -Sri Lanka Relations
• Communication Strategy and the Public Square in Foreign Policy
• Indian Foreign Policy
• Multipolarity, Strategic Autonomy and a Polarised World
• Feminist Foreign Policy