Former High Commissioner to Canada

Ajay Bisaria

Ajay Bisaria is a strategic business advisor and commentator on international affairs. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and chairs a Ministry of Steel task force studying the global experience in green steel. He is currently advising a few international companies, including OMERS, (a Toronto-based pension fund) and NEO Asset Management (a Mumbai-based infrastructure fund).

He has had a distinguished diplomatic career spanning 35 years as a member of the Indian Foreign Service (1987 batch), where he dealt with some of India’s key economic and security relationships. He served as Indian High Commissioner to Canada (2020-2022) and Pakistan (2017-2020). He was earlier India’s ambassador to Poland and Lithuania (2015-2017). He has also represented the country at the World Bank in Washington DC and in embassies in Berlin and Moscow. He has served in various capacities in the Ministry of External Affairs, Department of Commerce and the Prime Minister’s Office, where he was a key aide to Prime Minister Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004. He has dealt extensively with India’s Eurasia policy, including with Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia.

He has published and lectured on issues related to trade, finance, and geopolitics, with a focus on South Asia, Eurasia, Central Asia, and Canada. He writes extensively on geopolitics, including in op-ed columns in Indian newspapers. His first book, Anger Management, on the troubled diplomatic relationship between India and Pakistan, was released in January 2024, to critical and popular acclaim.

He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from St Stephen’s College, Delhi University, an MBA (Finance and Marketing) from IIM Calcutta and a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton University. He has received distinguished alumnus awards from Modern School, New Delhi and IIM Calcutta. He knows Russian, German and Urdu, apart from Hindi and English.