Amit, a former Indian diplomat, was appointed the Inaugural India Country Director for the internationally-ranked University of New South Wales, Sydney in July 2016. Thereafter, in July 2020, he was appointed Strategic Advisor for the University on its India engagement programme, which is among its flagship outreach activities. He is a Director on the Board of UNSW Global India Private Limited.
Prior to that and following his retirement from the Indian Foreign Service, he was appointed the first Head of the Mumbai Campus of the SP Jain School of Global Management, where he was the Administrative Head and a Faculty member.
He has a B.Com degree from St. Xavier’s College [Calcutta University], an MA and an M Phil in Sociology from the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was a recipient of the Government of India’s National Merit Scholarship and did a two-year affiliation with the Department of Sociology, McGill University, Canada, as a Commonwealth Fellow. He attended an Executive Development Programme at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
During his diplomatic career, which he joined in 1979, Amit served in various capacities in India and abroad, such as, Cairo, Brussels, Kathmandu, Berlin, Sydney and Manila. He was Ambassador to the Philippines, with concurrent accreditation to the Republics of Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia.
He was Consul General in Sydney during a difficult period in India-Australia relations following ‘attacks’ on Indian students that threatened to sour bilateral relations. During his tenure in Sydney (with concurrent accreditation to South Australia), he forged strong relations with educational institutions in NSW and SA , such as, UNSW, Uni Syd, UTS, Macquarie Uni, Universities of Newcastle and of Woolongong, Uni Adelaide, Uni South Australia, and others. He was instrumental in setting up the Australia India Youth Dialogue and in preparing the concept note for the establishment of the Australia India Institute. A bust of Mahatma Gandhi was installed at the UNSW and at University of Adelaide, of Rajiv Gandhi in UTS along with the establishment of a Centre for Contemporary India Studies, of Tagore at Macquarie University. He regularly delivered Guest Lectures at several Australian universities. He was also instrumental in instituting the annual Gandhi Oration at UNSW.