Hardeep S. Puri is Union Minister of State(I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs, Civil Aviation; and Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. He has had a distinguished four-decade career in diplomacy spanning the bilateral and multilateral arena, having held Ambassadorial posts in London, Brazil and as India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in both Geneva (2002-2005) and New York (2009-2013). He is one of the few Indians to preside over the UN Security Council and the only one to have chaired its Counter-terrorism Committee. He served as Chairman, RIS; as Vice President at the International Peace Institute; and as Secretary-General of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism in New York. He is the author of three books, Separating the Wheat from the Chaff: Decoding Dominant Narratives (Konark Publications, 2019); Delusional Politics (Penguin RandomHouse, 2019); and 'Perilous Interventions: The Security Council & The Politics of Chaos (HarperCollins, 2016).