Sundeep Waslekar

 

Scenario Planning

The Future of India

The Future of Asia

Geopolitical Risk for Global Business

International Terrorism and its Implications for World Business

Sundeep Waslekar is the founder of Strategic Foresight Group (SFG), a small think-tank that enjoys international reputation for crafting innovative policy concepts. His ideas, developed under SFG’s auspices, have been discussed in the United Nations, Indian Parliament, European Parliament, British Parliament (House of Commons, as well as House of Lords), League of Arab States, Alliance of Civilizations, World Economic Forum (Davos and regional meetings), Bertelsmann Global Policy Council, Aspen Institute and other forums. He has travelled to almost 50 countries to address or consult with leaders.

Sundeep spent his childhood on the outskirts of Mumbai amidst the daily reality of economic despair and street violence. He was awarded a scholarship to read PPE at Oxford University. While at Oxford, he was often invited to deliver talks on improving global governance by groups in Europe and the United States. After completing his studies, the then Prime Minister of India personally encouraged him to return home.

Instead of taking up a job with the government or business, Sundeep spent a few years learning to write. In the 1980s and early 1990s he contributed essays and features to some 50 periodicals, mostly India’s leading magazines, a prominent Hong Kong magazine and provincial newspaper in North America such as The Ottawa Citizen, Toledo Blade and The Hamilton Spectator. Among other interesting activities, he led an Eight Nation Peace Mission from Rome to Ottawa. The Mayor of Ottawa came to receive Sundeep at the bridge connecting Quebec to Ontario and renamed it as Peace Boulevard for one day.

In 1991, Sundeep set up Peace Initiatives, the first conflict resolution NGO in South Asia. Mikhail Gorbachev, who was then President of the Soviet Union, invited him to Kremlin for a conclave of world leaders. His conversations there and at other places resulted in The New World Order, a book of essays. A copy of the book somehow landed in the hands of the head of what was then the most extreme movement in Kashmir in his cell in the jail. When he was released, he contacted Sundeep to help find a solution to the conflict in Kashmir. Sundeep visited the valley in the middle of the worst violence in its history, without any security and negotiated humanitarian solutions with extremists pointing guns at me in the dark hours of night. In the following years, he came out with several publications on the issue and facilitated track two discussions.

Since 2000, he has authored ten book-length research reports and guided the writing of 20 other publications. In 2005, he delivered the Nelson Mandela Benefit Speech, when he presented the concept of An Inclusive World. Overall, Sundeep has been quoted, reviewed, interviewed and published in at least a thousand newspapers, websites and television channels including the BBC World Television, CNN, Newsweek, International Herald Tribune, Financial Times and The Guardian, most of the major newspapers in India, Pakistan and the Gulf, and national media in some 60-70 countries.