Arvind Gupta Director, Vivekananda International Foundation

Arvind Gupta is the Director of Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a Delhi-based independent, non-partisan think tank focusing on research on foreign policy, defence and security-related issues from the Indian perspective.

During 2014–2017, he was the Deputy National Security Advisor and Secretary, National Security Council Secretariat in the Government of India. He was associated with the National Security Council Secretariat as Joint Secretary from 1999 to 2007.

During 2012–2014, he was Director General of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), an autonomous institute set up by the Indian Ministry of Defence. He was Lal Bahadur Shastri Chair on National Security at the IDSA during 2008–2014. He was the managing editor of Strategic Analysis, IDSA’s flagship academic journal.

A former diplomat, Dr Gupta joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in 1979. He has served in Indian Mission in Moscow, London and Ankara, and worked on several desks in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

He is also an Honorary Professor in the Department of Defence and National Security Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh. His interests are in India’s foreign policy, national security, history, governance, culture and civilization. He also writes articles on popular science.

Having 20 years of policy-level experience in national security issues, he has been a part of several official and Track-II discussions on security. He has written and edited several books and articles on global, regional and national security issues as well as foreign policy.

His latest book How India Manages Its National Security was published in 2018.