Mugdha Sinha, IAS

Director General Tourism
Government of India
Mugdha Sinha is a 1999 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Rajasthan cadre with 25 years of experience in Public Policy and International Trade Negotiations.

She has recently moved on elevation as the Director General (Tourism), Government of India. Prior to this she was heading the GLAM Division as the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Culture where she conceived and successfully organized three back-to-back Mega Events – The International Museum Expo (IME), The Festival of Libraries (FOL) and the India Art Architecture, Design Biennale, (IAADB) all in 2023, that will remain her lasting legacy as India’s Global Cultural Initiatives for the Culture-Creative Economy. Quite befittingly, she has been conferred with the Raja Kakil Dev Sawai Jaipur Award 2024 for her pioneering work in Culture.
She has been at the helm of Culture and Science & Technology in the State of Rajasthan also, as the Director General of Jawahar Kala Kendra (JKK), Jaipur, during the pandemic, where due to her creative convergence with Science and Technology she pioneered the concept of Astro Night Sky Tourism which became a rage not only in Rajasthan but has inspired other States and private players to launch similar endeavors across India, leading to the declaration of Hanle as the country’s first Dark Sky Reserve. Crowd sourcing the Artist Data Base during the lockdown as a means to provide an e-platform for performance-based dole ensured artist work without compromising on their dignity in difficult times.

She is an alumnus of Lady Shri Ram College (LSR), Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) and the Goldman School of Public Policy University of Berkeley, USA, where she won the prestigious annual BAAS Business School Start-Up Challenge. A recipient of the Ford Foundation Scholarship, NET-JRF Fellowship, she was awarded the Manorama Desai Award for the Best Student in History and the Principal’s Award for Promoting the Academic Ethos of the College. In 2020, she was declared the ELSA Changemaker of the Year and entered the LSR Hall of Fame as its Distinguished Alumni.

Mugdha is an avid reader and a prolific writer. Her varied interests range from public policy to literature, economics and art history. A relentless bibliophile who runs an annual book reading challenge on her Instagram handle @bookspk2020.

Her epigrammatic “POSTCARD POEMS” in English on love, loss, longing and learnings has been published by Red River and Vani Publications has brought out a debut collection of her Hindi poems titled “Kya Kahun Maln, Main Kaun Hun”, both released in 2023.

As the elected Literary Secretary of the IAS Association, Rajasthan she has been curating book author conversations for the last four years where she has moderated more than hundred sessions with renowned Indian and International authors and has collaborated with Bonjour India, Siyahi Write Circle, Valley of Words, Poetry Couture and City Book Leaders. She has been a speaker at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Pune, Kochi and Sahitya Academy Lit Fests.

She also paints, painting wine and vodka bottles under her brand name, bottle is canvas, and feeds her heightened psychic & intuitive abilities by doodling Jungian mandalas infusing creativity into everything that she sets out to do.

As a civil servant, her only aspiration is to make the interface with the government a pleasant experience for the citizens.