No hardsell for this adman-turned-diplomat Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri

Indian Express

15-05-2025

OVER FOUR days of incessant firing at the Line of Control last week, over the din of drones, blackout screens, and frothing TV anchors, one of the few voices of calm was that of Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri.
Flanked by two officers, Colonel Sofiya Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, Misri became India's diplomatic voice during Operation Sindoor. Together, they signalled how in this operation, the military and diplomatic imperatives were in lock-step. For Misri, the message was clear: to ensure that the daily briefing was to the point — embellished with neither frill nor shrill.
Not a tall order for a diplomat who began as an adman. Misri joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in 1989, after three years at Lintas India in Mumbai and Contract Advertising in Delhi, where he worked closely with production teams. He would carry the skill of the hardsell to some of the toughest negotiating tables around the world — from China and Myanmar, where he held Ambassadorial stints, to Pakistan, where he was First Secretary during the Agra Summit.
Misri's batchmates, colleagues and former Ambassadors talk of him as 'a thorough professional' and, more significantly, in the me-myself-and-I age of social media, someone 'who doesn't advertise himself'.
A senior bureaucrat who has interacted with Misri when he was Ambassador in Myanmar vouches for 'another side' — a love for crime thrillers. He recalls a decade-old conversation with Misri in Naypyidaw, where they discussed Dog Day Afternoon, the 1975 Sidney Lumet classic, with Al Pacino in the lead.
Growing up in a Kashmiri Pandit family in Srinagar, where he did his early schooling before moving to Udhampur and Gwalior, Misri, colleagues say, rarely speaks about himself at public or private gatherings. A former Ambassador who has known Misri from his early days at the Pakistan desk of the Ministry of External Affairs, says, 'He never made it about himself. It was all about his work. That was what kept him engrossed.'
That self-effacing side was on display between May 7 and 10, when Misri stayed in touch with the military and worked the lines diplomatically, briefing and debriefing the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA).
While his composure was noticed by those in the room where he addressed the media, he was sharp on Pakistan's complicity in cross-border terrorism — one day pulling out a photograph showing slain terrorists getting state funerals and explaining terror targets on a map another day.
However, his statement on the evening of May 10, when he announced the pause on military action, led to an attack from war-mongering trolls who thought the ceasefire was a retreat on India's part, some even targeting his daughter. In response, Misri did what people know him for — he didn't dignify the comments with a public reaction; instead, he simply locked his social media handle.
It may have been a rare, uncomfortable moment of media glare for someone who is used to working behind the scenes. In 2001, when the Agra Summit between then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was organised, a former colleague recalls Misri putting in late hours.
He was then posted as First Secretary at the Indian Mission in Islamabad, and was in India as part of the team overseeing the logistics of the Summit.
'He would work late into the night to plan his next day's work, even after everyone else had called it a day,' recalls the colleague.
Misri would go on to take up other challenging assignments. He was India's Ambassador to China, when the ties between the two countries were impacted following the Galwan clashes in 2020.
Despite strained ties between Delhi and Beijing, he was instrumental in the bilateral conversations at the military and diplomatic levels. So in October 2024, when India and China came to an agreement on disengagement of troops, it was Misri who announced it to the world, this time as Foreign Secretary, a position he assumed in July 2024 and will hold till July 2026.
Misri also worked on the India-US Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies, while he was Deputy NSA between 2022 and 2024, working closely with NSA Ajit Doval.
His colleagues in South Block recall a special gesture he made soon after taking over as Foreign Secretary. In September last year, Misri hosted a dinner to mark the 100th birthday of former Foreign Secretary M K Rasgotra, known in the fraternity as 'GOAT FS'. Rasgotra was India's Foreign Secretary between 1982 and 1985.
He is also known to enjoy a rapport with Minister S Jaishankar, who, like him, was India's Ambassador to China before becoming Foreign Secretary. On assuming his office in Beijing in January 2019, the first photograph Misri posted was of the board showing the names of his predecessors, including Jaishankar and Shivshankar Menon.
Besides his China experience and on the MEA's Pakistan desk, Misri has served in various Indian missions in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. He was on the staff of two External Affairs Ministers (I K Gujral and Pranab Mukherjee), and has worked as Private Secretary for three Prime Ministers – I K Gujral, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi.
Mistri's knowledge of the workings of the PMO, the office of the NSA and the External Affairs Ministry are significant as he now has to implement India's foreign policy as determined and shaped by the trio in the political-strategic-security establishment — PM Modi, Jaishankar and Doval.
As the trio arrived in New Delhi in the early hours of April 23, cutting short their Saudi Arabia visit in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, it was Misri who received them at the airport, with a crucial briefing on the Pakistani imprint on the attacks, and other leads at that point.
Over the next two days, Misri briefed the Ambassadors and the High Commissioners of G20 countries, linking Pakistan-based terror groups to the Pahalgam attack, in which 26 civilians were killed.