Seminar: India’s Perception of China’s Belt and Road and Likely Response

Dipankar Banerjee is Visiting Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. He retired from the Indian Army as Major-General after 36 years of active service in August 1996. Before retiring he commanded an Infantry Division in Jammu & Kashmir at critical periods in the conflict.

Over the last 27 years, he was involved with strategic planning at the national level. He was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi from 1987-1990 and later its Deputy Director from 1992-96. Subsequently he was the founder and Co-Director of the think tank the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi from 1996 to 1999. From May 1999-2002 he was the Executive Director of the Colombo based think tank, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. He next spent a year as a Jennings Randolph Fellow at the US Institute of Peace, Washington, DC before reverting as the Director and Head of the IPCS.

Banerjee’s special areas of research interest are, India-China and India-Pak relations, confidence building measures, border security, China’s security and foreign policies, issues related to Indian security and disarmament, human security issues and security sector reforms.

Kanti Prasad Bajpai currently holds the Wilmar Chair in Asian Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Before this, he was Professor in the Politics and International Relations of South Asia, Oxford University (2009-2010), and Headmaster, The Doon School, Dehra Dun, India (2003-2009). From 1994 to 2003, he taught International Politics in the Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament of the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was Chairman of the Centre in 1997-98 and 2003.

Dr Bajpai has held various fellowships. In 1993-94, he was Resident Fellow of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, New Delhi. He was Visiting Fellow at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace, Notre Dame University and the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., in 2000-1. In May-June 2002, he was Visiting Fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA), Canberra. Dr Bajpai is a regular commentator in the Indian press and radio and television where he specializes on international affairs and Indian foreign and security policy. In 2012, he was awarded the K. Subrahmanyam Award for Excellence in Research in Strategic and Security Studies, New Delhi, India.

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