Nirupama Rao
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Nirupama Menon Rao (born 6 December 1950) is a retired
civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...
of 1973 batch
Indian Foreign Service The Indian Foreign Service (IFS) is the diplomatic service and a central civil service of the Government of India under the Ministry of External Affairs. The Foreign Secretary is the head of the service. Vinay Mohan Kwatra is the 34th and the ...
cadre who served as India's Foreign Secretary from 2009 to 2011, as well as being India's Ambassador to the United States, China and Sri Lanka (High Commissioner) during her career. In July 2009, she became the second woman (after
Chokila Iyer Chokila Iyer is an Indian diplomat and civil servant who served as India's first female foreign secretary from March 2001 to June 2002. She is an Indian Foreign Service officer of the 1964 batch and served as the Ambassador of India to the Repu ...
) to hold the post of India's Foreign Secretary, the head of the Indian Foreign Service. In her career she served in several capacities including, Minister of Press, Information and Culture in Washington DC, Deputy Chief of Mission in Moscow, stints in the MEA as Joint Secretary, East Asia and External Publicity, the latter position making her the first woman spokesperson of the MEA, Chief of Personnel, Ambassador to
Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...
and
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, and High Commissioner to
Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
.Nirupama Rao is India's new foreign secretary
The Times of India ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest ...
, 1 August 2009."Chokila Iyer was first woman, Indian Foreign Secretary in 2001."


Early life and education

Nirupama Rao was born in
Malappuram Malappuram (also Malapuram) () is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of including the surrounding suburban areas. The first municipality in the district formed in 1970, Malappuram serves as the administrative headquarter ...
,
Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...
. Her father, Lt. Colonel P.V.N Menon, was in the
Indian Army The Indian Army is the land-based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head is the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), who is a four- ...
. Her mother, Meempat Narayanikutty, was the first woman college graduate in her family, obtaining a BA Mathematics (Honors) degree from
Madras University The University of Madras (informally known as Madras University) is a public state university in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1857, it is one of the oldest and among the most prestigious universities in India, incorporated by an a ...
in 1947. Her sisters, Nirmala and Asha, are medical doctors by profession. Nirmala, pursued a career in the Indian Navy, retiring in 2013 as Surgeon Rear Admiral. Due to her father's profession, Rao schooled in various cities including
Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...
,
Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...
,
Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and division ...
, and
Coonoor Coonoor, natively spelt as Kunnur (), is a Taluk and a municipality of the Nilgiris district in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu. As of 2011, the town had a population of 45,494. Demographics According to 2011 census, Coonoor had a population ...
. She graduated from Mount Carmel College, Bangalore, with a BA in English in 1970, topping
Bangalore University Bangalore University (BU) is a public state university located in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. The university is a part of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) and affiliated by Univers ...
. She was a member of the then Mysore government's youth delegation to Expo 70 in Japan, in September 1970. She then went on to obtain her master's degree in English literature from what was then known as
Marathwada University Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (BAMU), formerly Marathwada University, is located in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India. It is named after B. R. Ambedkar, an Indian jurist and political leader. The university was established on 23 Au ...
in
Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...
. In 1973, Rao topped the All India Civil Services Examination for both the Indian Foreign Service and the Indian Administrative Service, and joined the
Indian Foreign Service The Indian Foreign Service (IFS) is the diplomatic service and a central civil service of the Government of India under the Ministry of External Affairs. The Foreign Secretary is the head of the service. Vinay Mohan Kwatra is the 34th and the ...
.


Career


Early career

On completion of her training at the
Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) is a civil service training institute on public policy and public administration in India. The academy's main purpose is to train civil servants of the IAS cadre and also cond ...
in Musoorie, she served in the Indian Embassy in Vienna, Austria from 1976 to 1977, where she completed her German language training at the University of Vienna. From 1978 to 1981, Rao served as an Under Secretary on the Southern Africa and Nepal desks, respectively, in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi. In 1981, Rao was posted as First Secretary in the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka. Here, she witnessed first hand the devastating ethnic riots of July 1983, which marked the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War. After returning to Delhi, Rao specialized in India's relations with China. She served in the MEA's East Asia Division for an unprecedented 8 consecutive years, from 1984 to 1992, eventually becoming Joint Secretary of the division in the late 1980s. In this period, Rao became an expert on the Sino-Indian border dispute and was seen as a key player in the revitalization of Sino-Indian ties. She was a member of the delegation led by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when he made his historic visit to Beijing in December 1988. Her interest in Tibetan affairs was consolidated with visits to the Tibet Autonomous Region, including the leading of a group of Indian pilgrims to the holy sites of Mt. Kailash and Lake Mansarovar in August 1986 and a visit to Lhasa and Xigaze in the summer of 1992. Rao was a Fellow at the
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs A weatherhead, also called a weathercap, service head, service entrance cap, or gooseneck (slang) is a weatherproof service drop entry point where overhead power or telephone wires enter a building, or where wires transition between overhead an ...
at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 1992-93 where she specialized on Asia-Pacific Security. Her paper on the subject, won the 1994 Bimal Sanyal Prize for the best dissertation written by an IFS officer. Following her time at Harvard, Rao served as Minister for Press, Information and Culture at the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. from 1993 to 1995.


Ambassador of India to Peru and Bolivia

Rao's first Ambassadorship was to Peru with concurrent accreditation to Bolivia, serving from 1995 to 1998. Her tenure saw the first ever visit by a sitting Indian President to Peru, when
K.R. Narayanan Kocheril Raman Narayanan (27 October 1921 – 9 November 2005) was an Indian statesman, diplomat, academic, and politician who served as the 9th Vice President of India from 1992 to 1997 and 10th President of India from 1997 to 2002 . Born i ...
visited in April/May 1998. This followed Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's visit to India in May 1997, the last such visit by a Peruvian Head of State. On that visit several agreements of mutual cooperation and two business agreements between the countries were signed. Rao was present at the Japanese embassy in Lima on December 17, 1996, during a reception to celebrate the birthday of the Japanese Emperor. She left the embassy minutes before it was stormed by a group of
Tupac Amaru Tupac Amaru Shakur ( ; born Lesane Parish Crooks, June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known as 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper. He is widely considered one of the most influential rappers of all time. Shakur is among the Li ...
militants who occupied the embassy for the next four months, holding a number of high-profile hostages.


Spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs

After her tenure in Peru, Rao served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Moscow from 1998 to 1999. Following this posting, she returned to the United States as a Distinguished International Executive in Residence at the University of Maryland at College Park from 1999 to 2000. In 2001, Rao became the official spokesperson for the MEA with her appointment as Joint Secretary, External Publicity Division (XP). Rao was the first, and so far only, female spokesperson for the MEA. Rao's tenure as spokesperson coincided with several significant events, including the July 2001 Agra Summit between India and Pakistan, and the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament and the subsequent standoff between India and Pakistan. This was a period during which the spokesperson's office gave frequent live briefings for the electronic and print media, both national and international and also began to post the complete transcripts of briefings on the website of the MEA, a practice that has since become institutionalized. From 2002 to 2004, Rao served as Additional Secretary, Administration (MEA Chief of Personnel). During this period she was also Foreign Service Inspector. In 2003, on the initiative of the then National Security Advisor and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister,
Brajesh Mishra Brajesh Chandra Mishra (29 September 1928 – 28 September 2012) was an Indian diplomat from the Indian Foreign Service and politician, best known for serving as Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's principal secretary and National Security Ad ...
, Rao became a member of the Special Representative's delegation for border talks with China. She participated in the first three rounds of these talks before her departure for Sri Lanka in 2004.


High Commissioner for India to Sri Lanka

Rao became India's first woman High Commissioner to Sri Lanka in August 2004, replacing
Nirupam Sen Nirupam is an Indian masculine given name. The name generally means "without comparison", "incomparable", or "unique", and is of Indian origin. People with the name Nirupam are usually Hindu by religion. Notable people * Nirupam Bajpai, India ...
. Her tenure in Sri Lanka saw the devastating
tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...
of December 2004 with Rao overseeing and administering the relief operations launched by India for the affected areas of Sri Lanka, including the war torn North and East of the country where she visited
Jaffna Jaffna (, ) is the capital city of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna District located on a peninsula of the same name. With a population of 88,138 in 2012, Jaffna is Sri Lanka's 12th most ...
,
Batticaloa Batticaloa ( ta, மட்டக்களப்பு, ''Maṭṭakkaḷappu''; si, මඩකලපුව, ''Maḍakalapuwa'') is a major city in the Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, and its former capital. It is the administrative capital of the B ...
and other towns including relief camps. The Indian Army, Navy and Air Force were extensively involved in the relief operations; they were returning to the island nation for the first time after the withdrawal of the
Indian Peace Keeping Force Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990. It was formed under the mandate of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord that aimed to end the Sri Lankan ...
(IPKF) in 1990. The Indian Army's restoration of transportation links in Arugam Bay after the deployment of five Bailey Bridges is particularly remembered. The operations by the Indian Navy to clear the Galle and Colombo harbors after the tsunami won special praise from the Sri Lankan government. The Indian government's relief efforts as first responder after the tsunami were widely praised in Sri Lanka for their promptness, efficacy and reach. During this period, Rao was also witness to significant internal political developments in Sri Lanka, including the assassination of Foreign Minister
Lakshman Kadirgamar Sri Lankabhimanya Lakshman Kadirgamar, President's Counsel, PC ( ta, லக்ஷமன் கதிர்காமர்; si, ලක්ෂ්මන් කදිර්ගාමර්, 12 April 1932 – 12 August 2005) was a Sri Lankan lawyer ...
(Rao was the last foreigner to see Kadirgamar before his assassination) and the election of
Mahinda Rajapaksa Mahinda Rajapaksa ( si, මහින්ද රාජපක්ෂ, ta, மஹிந்த ராஜபக்ஷ; born Percy Mahendra Rajapaksa; 18 November 1945) is a Sri Lankan politician. He served as the President of Sri Lanka from 2005 to ...
as President of the country.


Ambassador of India to China

In 2006, she became India's first woman Ambassador to China. Her tenure saw state visits by President Hu Jintao to India and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to China. The Indian Consulate General in Guangzhou was opened during her tenure in October 2007 by the then External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee. In 2007, Rao took the initiative to expand the Cultural Wing of the Embassy of India, transforming it into a hub for cultural activities including lectures, seminars, music and dance recitals and classes for Chinese students interested in Indian culture. The India-China Business Forum was also set up during this time, enabling a sharper focus on business-related activities concerning trade and investment between India and China. In 2009, at Rao's initiative, India sponsored a farmers’ training and information center in the far western province of Ningxia, a low income area. This was a first in the history of India-China relations. The construction of an Indian-style Buddhist temple at the ancient town of Luoyang in central China proceeded with rapidity during this period. Rao's tenure also witnessed the devastating Sichuan earthquake in the summer of 2008, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Following this, the Indian government announced relief worth 5 million U.S. dollars for the victims. Rao visited the earthquake affected city of Chengdu soon after the earthquake to coincide with the arrival of Indian Air Force aircraft bringing relief supplies. Rao's being summoned to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the early hour of 2 a.m on 21 March 2008 during disturbances in Tibet was the subject of considerable focus and criticism in the Indian media.


Foreign Secretary of India

Rao became India's second woman Foreign Secretary, succeeding Shivshankar Menon, on 1 August 2009. On 21 December 2010, the Government of India approved the extension of Rao's tenure as India's Foreign Secretary until 31 July 2011. The two-year tenure for Indian Foreign Secretaries was instituted during Rao's term of office as Foreign Secretary. During her tenure Rao was active in handling India's relations with its neighbors and with the United States, Russia and Japan, besides multilateral issues including nuclear energy cooperation as well as climate change. In this period, India was elected to a two-year term as non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Rao's handling of India-Pakistan related issues received considerable attention in the media. She was also instrumental in the setting up of the Indian Consulates General in Jaffna and Hambantota in Sri Lanka, with External Affairs Minister
S.M. Krishna Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna (born 1 May 1932) is an Indian politician who served as Minister of External Affairs (India), Minister of External Affairs of India from 2009 to October 2012. He was the 16th Chief Minister of Karnataka from 1999 to ...
publicly commending her for her role in the process. Rao also steered two Conferences of Indian Heads of Mission during her tenure. Rao made special efforts to augment and intensify the activities of the Public Diplomacy Division of the Ministry of External Affairs increasing its outreach significantly. She was a pioneer among senior officers of the Government of India in the use of social media, establishing her Twitter account in February 2011. During the evacuation of Indians at the time of the Libyan crisis Rao was commended for using her Twitter account (https://twitter.com/NMenonRao) to regularly update the public about the evacuation and also to respond to requests for help from stranded Indians in Libya. As of June 2019, she has over 1.4 million followers on Twitter. In 2010, while she was Foreign Secretary, Rao delivered the Harish Mahindra lecture at Harvard University and in 2011, the inaugural lecture for the Singapore Consortium for India-China Dialogue.


Ambassador of India to the United States of America

She was appointed as Ambassador of India to the US after completion of her tenure as Foreign Secretary. She served a tenure as ambassador in the United States from September 2011 to November 2013. Rao played a strong advocacy role for the bilateral relationship, being active in several public fora, including many leading U.S. universities, radio and TV shows, and in the print media where she authored op-eds on gender issues in India, IPR issues concerning pharmaceuticals, and on the growth of the India-U.S. strategic partnership. She interacted frequently with several Indian American community organizations across the length and breadth of the United States. She was particularly active in her outreach to the members of the Senate and House Caucuses on India and
Indian Americans Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...
in both Houses of the U.S. Congress. This period also saw the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington in September 2013, two meetings of the India-U.S. Strategic Dialogue, and several ministerial-level interactions between the two countries. One of her specific mission goals was to see the actualization of a long-standing goal for India to acquire a property for housing an Indian Cultural Center in Washington. Her tenure saw the purchase by the Indian Government (ending a quest that had lasted for close to four decades) of a property in downtown Washington D.C. to house the Center. Rao had consistently held that the fascination in the United States for Indian culture, the arts and letters of India, music and dance could be effectively leveraged to secure a deeper understanding and partnership. During her term, the Indian Embassy residence in Washington became a hub of several high-profile cultural events drawing the elite of the city to the Embassy and thereby significantly enhancing India's outreach in the city. Her efforts also led to the inscribing of the Embassy residence in the register of historical (heritage) residences in the upscale Cleveland Park neighborhood of the city.


Post-Retirement


Fellowships and Teaching Positions

On the completion of her tenure as Ambassador of India to the United States in November 2013, Brown University announced that Nirupama Rao would be the Meera and Vikram Gandhi Fellow in residence at the University during 2014. During the year, Rao was engaged in research on Sino-Indian diplomatic relations for what would eventually become her first work of historical non-fiction (''The Fractured Himalaya: India Tibet China 1949-1962'') and in writing on select foreign policy issues. In November 2014, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, New Delhi announced the conferment of the prestigious
Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship The Jawaharlal Nehru Trust Scholarship U.K. was founded by Admiral Lord Mountbatten of Burma in 1966 as a tribute to the India's first Prime Minister – Jawaharlal Nehru – after his death in 1964. The scholarship was funded by the Nehru Me ...
on Nirupama Rao in connection with her research for ''The Fractured Himalaya''. Following the completion of these fellowships, Rao taught at Brown University in 2015 and 2016, leading a seminar course titled "India in the World". The course covered several key areas of India's foreign policy and global interaction. In 2017, Rao was named a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C., affiliated with the center's Asia Program. As part of the fellowship, Rao spent three months in residence at the Wilson Center where she continued her research for ''The Fractured Himalaya''. Rao continues to be involved with the Wilson Center, serving on the Board of Advisors for the Asia Program. In 2018, Rao was named the George Ball Adjunct Professor for the fall semester at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. In 2019, she was a Pacific Leadership Fellow at the University of California, San Diego.


Advisory and Board Positions

Post her retirement from the Indian Foreign Service, Rao has served on various corporate boards in India including Adani Ports, ITC,
JSW Steel JSW Steel Limited is an Indian multinational steel producer based in Mumbai and is a flagship company of the JSW Group. After the merger of ISPAT Steel and Jindal Vijayanagar Steel Limited, JSW Steel became India's second largest private secto ...
,
KEC International KEC International Limited (Kamani Engineering Corporation) is an India, Indian multinational company and also India's second largest manufacturer of electric power transmission towers and one of the largest Power transmission, Engineering, Pro ...
,
Coromandel International Coromandel International Limited is an Indian corporation founded in the early 1960s by IMC and Chevron Companies of USA and EID Parry, headquartered in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. Originally named Coromandel Fertilisers, the company is in the ...
, Network 18 Media & Investments, TV18 Broadcast, Max Financial Services, Viacom 18.


Publications

Rao's first published work was a collection of her English language poems titled ''Rain Rising'', which was released in India in 2004 by Rupa Publications.India’s New Ambassador to China Takes Charge
Indian Embassy
A Malayalam translation of the book was released by Calicut University in June 2013 and a select number of poems from the collection have also been translated into Chinese (Mandarin) and Russian.


''The Fractured Himalaya: India Tibet China 1949-1962''

Rao's first work of non-fiction, ''The Fractured Himalaya: India Tibet China 1949-1962'', was released in October 2021 by Penguin Random House India. A detailed account of the formative years of the diplomatic relationship between independent India and the People's Republic of China, the book is written from a diplomat-practitioner's lens and draws from archival research on the subject as well as Rao's personal experience covering the relationship during her professional career. ''The Fractured Himalaya'' was met with critical acclaim upon its release, with many reviews considering it an authoritative work on the early diplomatic relations between India and the PRC. Critics especially praised the book's emphasis on Tibet as an independent political and socio-cultural entity and its crucial role in the evolution of the India-China relationship prior to the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962.


Awards and honours

During her tenure as Foreign Secretary, Rao received the KPS Menon Award (in 2010) and the Sree Chithira Thirunal Award (in 2011) for her achievements as a career diplomat. In May 2012, Rao was conferred the degree of Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa) by Pondicherry University at their Convocation. In 2012, she was included in the list of the One Hundred Most Influential Women on Twitter by ForeignPolicy.com. In February 2016, Rao received the Vanitha Rathnam Award from the Government of Kerala.


See also

*
S. Jaishankar Subrahmanyam Jaishankar (born 9 January 1955) is an Indian diplomat and politician serving as the Minister of External Affairs of the Government of India since 30 May 2019. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party and a Member of Parliame ...
*
Shivshankar Menon Shivshankar Menon (born 5 July 1949) is an Indian diplomat, who served as National Security Adviser of India under Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh. He had previously served as the Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs. Pr ...
*
Harsh Vardhan Shringla Harsh Vardhan Shringla (born 1962) is Chief Coordinator for India’s G20 Presidency in 2023. He has previously served as Foreign Secretary of India, Ambassador to USA, High Commissioner to Bangladesh and Ambassador to Thailand.
*
Vijay Gokhale Vijay Gokhale is an Indian Marathi and Hindi film and television actor and director. In 1995 he acted in the television series ''Shrimaan Shrimati''. Filmography Director * ''Dum Asel Tar'' (2012) * ''Bharat Aala Parat'' (2007) Actor * ' ...


References


External links


Profile
Ministry of External Affairs (India) The Ministry of External Affairs (abbreviated as MEA; hi, विदेश मंत्रालय, Videśa Mantrālaya, translit-std=ISO) of India is the government agency responsible for implementing Indian foreign policy. The Ministry of Ext ...
website
India Ambassador, Official page
at
Embassy of India, Washington, D.C. The Embassy of India in Washington, D.C. is the diplomatic mission of the Republic of India to the United States. It is headed by the Indian Ambassador to the United States. The current Ambassador is Taranjit Singh Sandhu. India also has consula ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rao, Nirupama 1950 births Living people People from Malappuram Indian women diplomats Harvard Fellows Ambassadors of India to China Indian Foreign Secretaries Ambassadors of India to the United States Bangalore University alumni Indian Foreign Service officers Indian women poets Women in Kerala politics Women writers from Kerala Poets from Kerala Jawaharlal Nehru Fellows 20th-century Indian poets 21st-century Indian poets 21st-century Indian women writers 20th-century Indian women writers 21st-century Indian women politicians 21st-century Indian politicians Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University alumni Mount Carmel College, Bangalore alumni Indian women ambassadors