Sundeep Waslekar

Sundeep Waslekar is the president of Strategic Foresight Group and has authored three books on governance and several research reports on managing future challenges.

Sundeep Waslekar is known for developing policy concepts for peaceful change, and his ideas have been discussed by the European Parliament, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom and House of Lords, the Indian Parliament, forums of the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council, World Economic Forum meetings at Davos and the Dead Sea, and other institutions.

Sundeep Waslekar is a signatory to the Normandy Manifesto for World Peace, along with 4 Nobel Peace Laureates (Jody Williams, Mohamed el Baradei, Leymah Gbowee, and Denis Mukwege) and an eminent philosopher, Anthony Grayling.

In the 1980s, Waslekar contributed essays and features to newspapers such as the Ottawa Citizen, San Jose Mercury News, Hamilton Spectator, and Toledo Blade.

When the United Nations declared 1985 the International Year of Peace, he led an Eight Nation Peace Mission from Rome to Ottawa.

Later on, he joined the Center for Policy Research to work on economic collaboration as a means of conflict resolution in South Asia.

During the period when the world was in transition, from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to the end of the First Gulf War in 1991, he sought perspectives from 40 world leaders across all continents to prepare a blueprint of the architecture of global governance in the post Cold War era.

In the second half of the 1990s, he wrote two books on India and the neighboring countries: South Asian Drama: Travails of Misgovernance, and Dharma Rajya: Path-breaking Reforms for India's Governance.

In 1991, he founded the International Centre for Peace Initiatives, the first conflict resolution institution in South Asia, which assisted with diplomatic efforts between India and Pakistan.

In the early 2000s, Waslekar and Ilmas Futehally led the Strategic Foresight Group to prepare cost of conflict models for India-Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East.

Following the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the War on Terror, he facilitated dialogues between Western and Islamic leaders in collaboration with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament and the League of Arab States.

In 2002, he developed a new categorization of the Indian economy based on consumption patterns rather than income levels.

In 2005, he was associated with the initiative of Paul Martin, then Canada's Prime Minister, to create a G-20 framework for global governance.

In an article in India's The Economic Times in August 2007 and in the Strategic Foresight Group report on Emerging Issues: 2011–2020 in January 2008, Waslekar warned about the possibility of the collapse of the global financial system.

The Emerging Issues report identifies 20 drivers of change that will impact the next decade.

It was labeled as L-20 and fructified only at the end of 2008 in response to international financial crisis.

He is also the author of a bestselling book in Marathi, Eka Dishecha Shodh, that has sold 23 editions since it was first published in 2009.

Sundeep Waslekar spent his childhood in Dombivli, a suburb of Mumbai, India.

He obtained a Master of Commerce degree from the University of Mumbai.

After graduation, he published an independent article on reforming the global financial system in Financial Express.

He was also invited to an international seminar on North South Dialogue hosted by Liberal International to present his views.

Later on, he got the opportunity to pursue his studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at St. John's College, Oxford University.

In 2009, he launched dialogue processes to use water to promote collaboration between traditional enemies in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

In his speeches at conferences organized by the Aspen Institute in Italy and the Bertelsmann Foundation to reflect on global economic crisis in 2009, he presented ideas for a framework for economically inclusive and environmentally sustainable future for the world.

The book raises questions that will face humanity from 2010 to 2060 over a wide spectrum of issues, from philosophy to politics and science to security.

In December 2011, he was conferred the D. Litt. (Doctor of Literature, Honoris Causa) of Symbiosis International University at the hands of the President of India.

In 2011, he co-authored a book of essays, Big Questions of Our Time with Ilmas Futehally.

In 2014, he was elected Senior Research Fellow of the Center for the Resolution of Intractable Conflicts at Harris Manchester College of Oxford.

In 2015, he created the Water Cooperation Quotient to quantify the quality of cooperation within trans-boundary river basins worldwide.

In 2017, a revised version of the Water Cooperation Quotient was launched, covering all 286 shared river basins in the world.

It has political support from the InterAction Council of Former Heads of State and Government.