Ms. NAMRATA S. KUMAR
Ambassador
Ambassador Namrata S. Kumar is a career diplomat. She joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1997.
Ambassador Kumar has served India’s diplomatic Missions in Cairo (Egypt) from 1999 to 2002, Paris (France) from 2007 to 2011 and as Deputy Chief of Mission in the United Arab Emirates from (2011 to 2014). At the Foreign Ministry (Ministry of External Affairs – MEA) in New Delhi, Ms. Kumar has at separate times oversaw work in the Disarmament, Central Europe, and Archives & Records Management Divisions.
Before taking over as Ambassador of India to Slovenia on 13 August 2020, from 2015 to 2020 she was Deputy Director General of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) – MEA’s soft power promotion arm, where she extensively worked on mainstreaming soft-power promotion in foreign policy and designing and executing action plans and programmes for promotion of India’s soft power. She was instrumental in digitizing administrative, financial and service delivery processes in ICCR and led development and execution of ICCR’s scholarship portal https://a2ascholarships.iccr.gov.in/.
Pioneering way for Foreign Ministry/ Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reaching out to the State Governments, Ambassador Kumar is the first foreign service officer to have served on deputation to the State Government of Uttarakhand, where she served in the capacity of Additional Secretary, Rural Development (from 2002 to 2004) and Additional Secretary, Education; Director, State Literacy Mission and State Project Director (SPD) for World Bank funded Education for All (EFA) Programme – Sarva Shiksha Adbhiyan (from 2004 to 2007). During her deputation, she developed (a) ‘School performance measurement, grading and mapping tool’ and established a performance-based planning, resource allocation and programme implementation system for the schools and districts [documented in a book “Uttaranchal: Ideas that Worked” by then Chief Secretary, M. Ramachandran], (b) use of digital tools and technology for teaching-learning and monitoring and (c) was instrumental in establishing MEA’s Regional Passport Office in Dehradun, Uttarakhand.
Ambassador Kumar specializes in public and socio-cultural diplomacy and has unique experience of working in the social sector, especially in the field of education, digital literacy, skill development, digital and skill-based economic management, and planning.
Ms. Namrata S. Kumar has Bachelors (Hons) degree in Botany and Master’s degree in social Anthropology from the University of Delhi. She also holds senior diploma in Indian classical dance – Kathak. She speaks Hindi, English, and Marathi and has good knowledge of Arabic and French. She is married to Mr. Abhinav Kumar, an Indian Police Service officer, currently serving as Additional Director General of Police, Uttarakhand. They are proud parents of a daughter Afsana and a son Aviral.
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