India Think Tank Forum 2026: Building Resilience in a Shifting World Order

The Forum, where experts are discussing shifting global dynamics and India's response to them is being held on January 12 and 13.

The India Think Tank Forum is ORF's flagship annual initiative, conceived as a pan-India platform to bring together the country's diverse and rapidly expanding think-tank community.

Conceived as an "intellectual gym", the India Think Tank Forum provides a space to reflect, challenge assumptions, and sharpen perspectives, a release said.

The 2026 edition is centred on the theme "India in a Changing World: Building Inner Resilience".

Hosted at Nalanda--one of the world's earliest centres of learning--this edition underscores the Forum's commitment to regional diversity and intellectual decentralisation, reinforcing the idea that India's policy conversations must emerge from across the country.

ITTF serves as a convening point for cross-sectoral collaboration, critical dialogue, and knowledge exchange among policy researchers, academics, and institutional leaders from across the country, the release said.

With each edition, ORF seeks to purposefully expand this network--bringing new institutions into conversation to build a more connected, regionally representative, and purpose-driven ecosystem of ideas, it said.

The 2026 edition is bringing together leading think tanks, researchers, and policy institutions to collectively examine shifting global dynamics and India's responses to them. The focus is on moving beyond commentary towards clarity--bridging reflection and action, and strengthening the link between ideas, institutions, and influence.

Through a series of sessions on geopolitics, the economy, sustainability, technology, and social transformation, the Forum aims to assess whether India's current policy frameworks and think-tank ecosystem are equipped for the complexity of the decade ahead.

The Forum also aims to encourage cross-pollination of ideas to strengthen analytical independence and intellectual rigour and examine how India's domestic preparedness--economic, institutional, and societal--intersects with an evolving global landscape.

It seeks to build a collaborative roadmap for think tanks as enablers of strategic foresight and policy innovation.

The Forum is featuring over 80 participants from 75 think tanks across India, reflecting the breadth and diversity of the country's policy research ecosystem.

Distinguished speakers and participants include Samir Saran, President, Observer Research Foundation; Sachin Chaturvedi, Vice Chancellor, Nalanda University; Harsh V. Pant, Vice President, ORF; Pradeep Chauhan, Director General, National Maritime Foundation; T.P. Sreenivasan, Director General, Kerala International Centre; Laveesh Bhandari, President and Senior Fellow, Centre for Social and Economic Progress.

The participants also include D Dhanuraj, Founder-Chairman, Centre for Public Policy Research; RPS Bhadauria, Additional Director General, Centre for Land Warfare Studies; Raul V Rodriguez, Vice President, Woxsen University; Priyanka Bhide, Co-founder, Kubernien Initiative; Biren Nanda, Senior Fellow, Delhi Policy Group; Ruhee Neog, Security and Foreign Policy Analyst, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies and Guru Prakash Paswan, Visiting Fellow, India Foundation.

All sessions of the India Think Tank Forum are being released on the ORF YouTube channel, with key insights and discussion highlights shared on ORF's official X handle (@orfonline).

- ANI