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| Dipankar Banerjee Former Executive Director of RCSS |
Major General (Retd) Dipankar Banerjee, retired prematurely from the Indian Army after 36 years of active service in August 1996 including as commander in some of India’s wars. This was in order to devote full time efforts at strategic studies and disarmament. Before retiring he commanded an Infantry Division in Jammu & Kashmir at a critical period in the insurgency in 1991-92.
Over the last 27 years, even while on active service, he was involved with strategic planning at the national level. He was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi from 1987-1990 and later its Deputy Director from 1992-96. Subsequently he was the founder and Co-Director of the autonomous think tank the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi from 1996 to 1999. From May 1999-2002 he was the Executive Director of the Colombo based South Asian think tank, Regional Centre for Strategic Studies. He next spent a year as a Jennings Randolph Fellow at the US Institute of Peace, Washington, DC before reverting as the Director and Head of the IPCS. During this period the IPCS emerged as a leading think tank on strategic and disarmament issues in all of Asia. In 2009 it won the coveted Prof Sondhi Award as the best strategic think tank in India.
Banerjee’s special areas of research interest are, India-China and India-Pak relations, confidence building measures, border security, China’s security and foreign policies, issues related to Indian security and disarmament, human security issues and security sector reforms. He has been a Consultant to the UN on the panel of the Group of Governmental Experts Conventional Arms and prepared its report to the Secretary General. He has published and lectured extensively on these subjects in books, periodicals and journals and appears often in national and international media. He travels frequently to China, Japan, Southeast Asia, the USA and Europe and participates in international strategic disarmament and CBM dialogues.
