Bio
Ruchi Ghanashyam joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in 1982. During her career of thirty-eight years, she worked in various capacities at the Ministry of External Affairs, the Government of India, including as Director (Pakistan) and Secretary (West). Outside India, she served in the Indian embassies in Damascus, Kathmandu, Brussels, and Islamabad as well as the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, New York. She was India’s High Commissioner to Ghana, South Africa and the UK, where she retired in 2020.
Post-retirement, she has written newspaper columns and articles as well as chapters for books. She has participated in several seminars and panel discussions, speaking on India’s foreign policy to students in India and the UK as well as at think tanks.
She is a member of the Board of Patrons at the India Centre for Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development, University of Southampton; an adjunct faculty at the Manipal Centre for European Studies, Manipal Academy of Higher Education; a member of the Academic Advisory Council of India’s International Movement to United Nations (IIMUN), and is on the Advisory Board for Times Critical Thinking Championship (TCTC) from Times of India.
She published her first book, An Indian Woman in Islamabad in August 2024, which focuses on her and her husband, AR Ghanashyam’s posting as Counsellors at the High Commission of India, Islamabad, where the family, including their two sons, lived during the tumultuous years from 1997-2000.
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