Event Start Date: April 7, 2017 | Event End Date: April 7, 2017 | Event Venue: Hotel Avenue Regent, M.G Road, Kochi, Kerala |
Ambassador (retired) Nirupama Rao will deliver the CPPR 13th Quarterly Lecture on ‘Asia Policy for India’.
Date: Friday, April 7, 2017
Time: 5.00 pm to 7.00 pm
Venue: Hotel Avenue Regent, M.G Road, Kochi, Kerala
NIRUPAMA RAO
Ambassador (retired) Nirupama Rao, is a former Foreign Secretary of India (2009-2011). Her professional life from 1973 to 2013 was spent in the practice of diplomacy in the service of the Government of India as a member of the prestigious Indian Foreign Service. During her career, Ms. Rao served both in the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi and in Indian embassies in various world capitals. She is a specialist in India–China relations, owing to a long period of service in the East Asia Division of the Ministry of External Affairs between 1984 and 1992. She was a member of the delegation that accompanied the then Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, on his historic visit to China in December 1988. She has also served as India’s ?rst woman ambassador to China from 2006 to 2009.
Ambassador Rao was the first woman spokesperson of the Indian foreign office and also the first Indian woman to be High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. She is also the longest serving Indian woman Foreign Secretary completing a full tenure of two years from 2009 to 2011. She was India’s Ambassador to the United States between 2011 and 2013.
In her retirement, Ambassador Rao has been working on a book on India-China relations. She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University in the United States, in 2014, 2015 and 2016. At Brown, she has taught an International Relations Course for undergraduate seniors called “India in the World”. She has also been a recipient of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship at the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi. She is a frequent OpEd contributor to leading Indian newspapers like The Hindu and The Indian Express and the online wire.in. Ambassador Rao has a widely recognised public profile in India stemming from her years as Spokesperson and as Foreign Secretary. She is the recipient of a Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa) degree conferred on her by Pondicherry University, India in 2012. She is also a published author of a book of poems, “Rain Rising” (Rupa, 2004) in English. A Malayalam translation of this book was published in 2013, and a few of her poems have been translated into Chinese.
Nirupama Rao was born in Kerala in southern India. Her father was an officer in the Indian Army, her mother a homemaker. Ambassador Rao was educated in schools in various parts of India and completed her university education in Bangalore and Aurangabad. When she was twenty-one years old, she sat for the very competitive Civil Services Examination and was adjudged the most meritorious, topping the all India list of successful candidates. It was thus that she joined the Foreign Service, fulfilling a dream she held since she was twelve years old. She is married to Sudhakar Rao and has two sons.
CPPR Quarterly Lecture Series
CPPR initiated the Quarterly Lecture Series in November 2012 to share insight with the public on social and political themes. The lecture series is designed to create a nation-wide conversation and offer the public an opportunity to interact with thought leaders in a town hall–style setting.
CPPR Quarterly Lecture Series has hosted eminent speakers like Dr Shashi Tharoor, Dr Alexander T J Lennon, Dr Madhav Gadgil, J M Lyngdoh, Happymon Jacob, Dr Sandeep Shastri, Professor T V Paul, Dr Ramesh Chand, Dr Dileep Padgaonkar, Dr Sanjaya Baru, Dr Jacob Thomas IPS and Dr D Subbarao.