Sumitha Narayanan Kutty is an associate research fellow in the South Asia Program at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her work focuses on India’s foreign and security policies in the Indo-Pacific, with special interest in the Middle East and western Indian Ocean. She has extensive fieldwork experience in Iran, Israel, the UAE, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the strategic Indian Ocean island states of Mauritius and Seychelles, among other countries. She holds multiple degrees in journalism from India and a master’s degree in security studies from Georgetown University, Washington, DC.