Pankaj Saran is a former diplomat with forty years of experience in foreign, strategic and national security affairs. He has served in key positions within the Government of India in the Prime Minister’s Office, the National Security Council Secretariat, Ministry of External Affairs and in several Indian Missions abroad.

He has served as India’s Ambassador to Russia and India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh, and as Head of the Northern Division in the Ministry of External Affairs dealing with Nepal and Bhutan.

Shantanu Mukharji was born in Allahabad on 23 September 1950. He lives and breathes expertise in security matters after a career of 45 years (and counting) as a specialist in policing and critical security assignments. He joined the police service in 1976 and served with distinction in communally sensitive and trouble-prone districts of Uttar Pradesh.

In 1985, he was handpicked for the Special Protection Group (SPG), where he spent seven action-packed years overseeing security arrangements for four successive Prime Ministers. Later he was inducted into the sensitive Cabinet Secretariat, where he served at home and overseas on special assignments vital to national security interests. Shri Mukharji has twice been awarded prestigious police medals for his services. After his retirement, he served as the National Security Advisor (NSA) to the Prime Minister of Mauritius between 2010 and 2015.

Dr Sweta Kumari is a Senior Research Fellow at NatStrat and an International Relations and Geopolitics Analyst specialising in US Studies, Indo-Pacific strategy, and India-US strategic relations. With over seven years of experience across think tanks, academia, and policy research institutions, her work focuses on Indian foreign policy, US foreign policy, Indo-Pacific geopolitics, US-China relations, trade and geoeconomics, emerging technologies, and strategic affairs.

Previously, she served as Assistant Professor of Defence and Strategic Studies at Rashtriya Raksha University, an Institution of National Importance under the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.

Siddhant Hira is a Senior Research Associate at NatStrat. He focuses on India-China relations; the Indian Ocean Region and the Indo-Pacific; India’s Special Forces, Intelligence and Foreign Policy; India’s neighbourhood; and the cognitive and information domain.

He co-edited the NatStratSpecial Feature The Indian Ocean and its Littorals, contrasting the relative inaction of the Chinese Navy against the Houthis in the Western Indian Ocean with a far more active Indian Navy deployment, as a case study of their respective responses.

Sourav Sinha is a Research Assistant at NatStrat, a Delhi-based foreign policy think tank. He did his Masters in International Relations from South Asian University, New Delhi. Sourav’s research interests include West Asia, middle powers and India’s neighbourhood, with a focus on regional geopolitics. His MA dissertation examined middle powers with a special focus on Türkiye and its role in contemporary international relations.

He can be reached at sourav.sinha@natstratindia.org