As India rolls out the red carpet for the G20 Leaders’ Summit, one man who has been omnipresent in the run-up — from deliberations to preparations — is Amitabh Kant, India’s G20 Sherpa. Kant was appointed to his current role in July last year, months before India assumed the G20 Presidency. When Kant moved to Sushma Swaraj Bhawan, which houses the G20 secretariat, it wore a deserted look. On the domestic front, his immediate task was to build a team of officers, consultants and domain experts, and, at the same time, involve various stakeholders to start preparing for the diplomatic event. On the global forum, his priorities were to navigate the country’s interests in a polarised world in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the G20 Leaders’ Summit 2022, under Indonesia's Presidency, was just months away. Kant played a key role in forging consensus among sherpas of the G20 member countries in framing the G20 Bali Declaration (November 15-16, 2022) that echoed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘not-an-era-of-war’ phrase. A retired 1980-batch IAS officer of Kerala cadre, Kant is known for his role in big initiatives — Startup India, Make in India, Incredible India. He is credited with coining the slogan “Kerala: God’s Own Country” during his tenure in the Kerala government. Kant’s track record has earned him a place in the current dispensation. When Prime Minister Modi scrapped the Planning Commission and established NITI Aayog in 2015, Kant was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the newly created think-tank in 2016. He served as the CEO till June 30, 2022. During his 6-year tenure, Kant handled politically sensitive issues initiatives such as the Aspirational Districts programme. He also headed one of the empowered groups of officers constituted to formulate the government’s response to Covid-19 pandemic. He was at the helm of affairs at Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). Kant shares a rapport with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, which in a way, in a way has been helpful to him in his diplomatic sojourn. A bureaucrat-turned-politician, Jaishankar is a retired officer of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) of the 1977 batch. Jaishankar and Kant come from the same colleges — St. Stephens and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Kant, who did his schooling from Modern School in Delhi, did his graduation in Economics from St. Stephens college. Thereafter, he completed an MA from JNU. At JNU, Kant and Jaishankar were in the same hostel. “When I joined JNU, I found myself on the same floor of the same hostel in JNU, at which Mr Jaishankar was. In the midst of all mediocre like me—the floor was full of mediocre—Mr. Jaishankar was the only bright, brilliant intellectual… He was a star then, and a star now… He was inspiring many of us,” Kant said recently. Over the years of his time in Lutyens’ Delhi, his office addresses have changed from Samrat Hotel to Udyog Bhawan to NITI Aayog to Sushma Swaraj Bhawan, but there are few things which have remained constant. The first is a glass door in his office. The second, his favourite playlist of ghazals including Chitra Singh’s “Hum ko dushman kee nigaahon se na dekha kijiye”. The third, and most important, is his team of private staff, who have been working relentlessly, while remaining faceless, over the years.
