FICCI - India Institute Visiting Fellow

The FICCI fellowship was established as a collaboration between the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the King’s India Institute at King’s College London. FICCI have a long standing tradition of supporting advancement of knowledge in the wider community, and this association is a further step in that direction. The FICCI-India Institute Visiting Fellow will help to promote and develop a relationship that will be of enormous benefit to staff, students and researchers within the College, as well as engage with policy-makers, media representatives and businesses in the wider community in the United Kingdom and Europe.

In its inaugural year, Ambassador Shyam Saran, an eminent officer of the Indian Foreign Service, served as the first FICCI fellow. FICCI will have two more fellows under the programme till 2014. Future Fellows will also be recognised as a person of eminence in the fields of business, public policy, government, media and the like. Each Fellow will spend up to four months at King’s and during their time here will give lectures, conduct panel discussion, guide and mentor students, interact with policy and business networks in the UK, and work on a policy research paper.

This unique Fellowship offers a chance to the King’s India Institute to gain a experience of current issues directly from experts working in the field as well as providing a forum for relationship building between the UK and India.

Ambassador Shyam Saran

April-June 2012

The first FICCI-India Institute Visiting Fellow was Ambassador Shyam Saran. Mr Saran has a Masters in Economics, and is a career diplomat. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1970 and has been India’s Ambassador to Myanmar, Indonesia and Nepal, and High Commissioner to Mauritius. He has been Head of the Economic Division, the Multilateral Economic Division and the East Asia Division in the Ministry of External Affairs, Joint Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office (1991-91), and Foreign Secretary (2004-06). He also has special expertise in and experience of climate change talks. Since his retirement, he has been the Indian Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Indo-US Civil Nuclear issues, and later Special Envoy and Chief Negotiator on Climate Change. He also served as the Prime Minister’s personal representative or ‘Sherpa’ at the Gleneagles and St Petersburg G8 & G5 Summits as Advisor on Climate Change issues, and attended the Pittsburg G20 Summit as a member of the Indian delegation.

Shyam Saran is Member of the National Security Advisory Board under the National Security Council. He was recently appointed Chairman, Research & Information System for Developing Countries, which is an autonomous think tank specialising in studies on economic and trade-related issues.