Indian Council of World Affairs

Smt. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar, Acting Director General & Additional Secretary, ICWA

Smt. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar is an Indian diplomat. She joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1996. She is currently serving as the Acting Director General and Additional Secretary in the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), India’s oldest and leading foreign policy think tank based in New Delhi. In her present assignment, she oversees the Council’s myriad activities that contribute to the shaping of India’s views on international relations and to the contours of Indian Foreign Policy. These activities range from curating conversations and discussions, lectures and interactions of visiting foreign dignitaries, dialogues with international partners, national outreach to universities and think tanks, the Council’s various publications and overseeing the Council’s research work by the in-house research faculty and external experts. 

During her 29 years of service, Smt. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar has gained expertise in the working of institutions of global governance having done a stint at the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva. She has served twice in the Indian Embassy in Moscow and is known as a Russia hand in the Indian Foreign Service. In the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, she has looked after India’s relations with West European countries and has served as Joint Secretary (Coordination). As Joint Secretary (Parliament), she oversaw the Ministry’s Parliamentary work and coordinated all interactions between the Ministry and the Parliament ranging from the hearings of the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs and other Committees, Parliamentary debates on foreign policy and meetings of the Consultative Committee on External Affairs. A key area of Interest and expertise of Smt. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar is Disarmament and Non-Proliferation having served as Desk Officer for four years in the Ministry on the subject. 

Smt. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar has edited several book projects of ICWA viz; 70 Years of India-Japan Diplomatic Relations: Reflections and Way Forward co-edited with Jojin V. John (2023); India's Development Partnership: Expanding Vistas, co-edited with Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharjee (2023); Advancing Reformed Multilateralism in the Changing World, co-edited with Deepika Saraswat (2022); Women and Power: Gender within International Relations and Diplomacy co-edited with Ankita Dutta (2022); Road, Winds, Spices in the Western Indian Ocean: The Memory and Geopolitics of Maritime Heritage, co-edited with Pragya Pandey (2022); Gandhi and the World, co-edited with Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharjee (2022); 1982 UNCLOS: Perspectives from the Indian Ocean, co-edited with Vijay Sakhuja & Pragya Pandey (2021); Indo-Pacific: Re-imagining the Indian Ocean through an Expanded Geography, co-edited with Vijay Sakhuja (2021).

Smt. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar is a Post Graduate in Economics.

Smt. Nutan Kapoor Mahawar is married and has two children.

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