Mr. Sudhir Vyas
(BT/EE/1975)
Mr. Sudhir Vyas retired from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September 2023 as Secretary to the Government of India after a rewarding diplomatic career as an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer. He is a Presidential gold medalist of IIT Kanpur from the Class-of-75. He was amongst the first few IITians to change course and opt for an altogether different professional stream. This was a rare challenge in those early days, when the complex system of difficult entrance examinations and oral tests to enter the Indian civil services were so different, both in style and substance, from an IIT engineering syllabus. Yet he sat for the all India civil services examinations conducted by the union public service commission to top the IAS in 1977. He joined the IFS the same year.
Profile
In the course of his diplomatic career spanning 32 years now, Sudhir has spent almost a third dealing with Indian neighbours where India foreign policy faces some of its severest challenges, either from those capitals or
handling their affairs from the foreign ministry in Delhi. He has served in Kathmandu, Nepal, in those tumultuous days leading to the introduction of democracy in that country; in Pakistan, at a particularly difficult period
in our bilateral relations that witnessed some of the most tricky diplomatic situations in that country, such as General Musharraf military coup, the IC 814 airplane hijacking and its violent aftermath, the Agra
Summit and the risky situation during operation Parakram following the terrorist attack on our Parliament in 2001.
Another area of Sudhir's specialisation has been the Arab world, where he served as the Indian Ambassador to the UAE fron 2003 to 2005, and earlier in various positions in Egypt and Algeria. He studied Arabic to meet the
requirements of this specialisation. He has also considerable experience of multilateral diplomacy at the UN in New York, when he served as a member of India delegation to the UN Security Council when India was a member of that body in 1991-92, just when the former Soviet Union collapsed and the balance of power in the world began to change with the first Gulf war.
Mr. Vyas was Ambassador in Thimphu, Bhutan, a country with which India enjoys a specially close relationship, from 2005 to 2009 - a particularly historic period that witnessed Bhutan's transition to constitutional democracy and the coronation of its present King. Following his tenure in Thimphu, Mr. Vyas was the Indian Ambassador to Germany, an European economic powerhouse and a leading innovator of technologies for the future;
including in areas such as climate change and green energy, where this diplomatic engagement and dialogue takes on a special relevance today.
Mr. Vyas had wide-ranging interests as a student at IIT Kanpur, from history to art, but he was especially known for his interest in and knowledge of wildlife, in particular, ornithology. A keen bird watcher, he
had invited Padma Bhushan Shri Salim Ali, perhaps India's most outstanding researcher, author and conservationist in this field to speak at IIT Kanpur.And all through his diplomatic career that has taken him to many different parts of the world, Sudhir has kept up his keen interest in birds, ornithology and wildlife in particular, and conservation issues in general. He has been conferred the distinguished alumnus award of IITKanpur for his outstanding achievements in managing the diplomatic relations of India with several countries.
Achievements and Honors
- Recipient of Distinguished Alumnus Award, 2010 by IIT Kanpur.