Nirmala Sitharaman, who has served a full term as a finance minister, has been included in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet in his third consecutive term. She has become the first woman to be sworn in as minister for the third term of the National Democratic Alliance government.
Nirmala Sitharaman has joined the likes of Arun Jaitley and Manmohan Singh by serving a full term as Finance Minister. The two-term Union Minister is credited with carrying forward second-generation reforms. She was inducted into the Prime Minister’s cabinet in 2014.
Nirmala Sitharaman was born in Madurai on August 18, 1959, to Narayan Sitharaman (who worked in the Railways) and Savitri (a homemaker). She studied economics at Tiruchirapalli’s Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College. The 64-year-old politician then moved to the capital to pursue her Master’s and Master of Philosophy in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). But before the veteran politician forayed into politics, she was part of the corporate world in the United Kingdom.
In the UK, she was living with her husband Parakala Prabhakar. The two had met while studying at JNU and married in 1986. They were blessed with a daughter, Parakala Vangmayi.
Nirmala Sitharaman’s political career started in 2008 when she joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (she returned to India in the early 1990s). In two years, she became the party’s second female spokesperson after Sushma Swaraj. After becoming the second lady spokesperson, she started fielding questions from journalists at the party headquarters and also became a familiar face on television debates.
As the Union finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman has so far tabled six budgets. This includes the February 1 Interim Budget. She became the second finance minister to present her sixth straight budget after equaling her record with former PM Morarji Desai. She steered away from the traditional leather briefcase. In recent years, the 64-year-old Union Minister opted for a digital tablet wrapped in a traditional ‘bahi-khata’ style pouch. This maintained a blend of tradition and modernity.