Early in his career, Amitabh Kant’s skill in rendering complex issues into bullet-point briefs won him a nickname―AK-47. That skill is apparently what made him one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most trusted lieutenants.
As India’s sherpa at the G20 summit in Delhi in September, Kant was instrumental in ironing out differences between member countries and facilitating the drafting of a 34-page joint declaration that many people did not expect to materialise. “The most complex part of the entire G20 was to bring consensus on the geopolitical paras (Russia-Ukraine). This was done over 200 hours of nonstop negotiations, 300 bilateral meetings, 15 drafts,” he posted on X.
Kant has had good practice in solving problems. The 1980-batch IAS officer’s first posting was as sub-collector of Thalassery in Kerala’s trouble-prone Kannur district. (“The best biryani in the world is Thalassery fish biryani from Paris restaurant,” he once tweeted.) Later, as the state’s tourism secretary―“a punishment posting of sorts because Kerala back then was nowhere the tourist haven it is today”―he worked the God’s Own Country branding campaign that famously clicked. As joint secretary of tourism in the A.B. Vajpayee government, Kant also oversaw the Incredible India campaign, which reinvented India’s image in the world tourism sector at a time when the 9/11 attacks in the US, and the subsequent war on terror and financial slowdown, significantly affected growth prospects.
Under Modi, Kant had successful stints as CEO of NITI Aayog and secretary of the department of industrial policy and promotion. The G20 triumph is just the latest in his long list of accolades.