Nirmala Shitharaman

Nirmala Sitharaman (born 18 August 1959) is an Indian politician from the state of Tamil Nadu presently serving as Minister of State (Independent Charge) for the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, as well as a Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs under the Ministry of Finance headed by Arun Jaitley. Until recently, she served as a national spokesperson for the Bharatiya Janata Party (called Bharatha Makkal Kazhagam in Tamil). Currently, she has been allotted the MP seat in the Rajya Sabha representing the state of Karnataka.

Early life and career

Nirmala Sitharaman was born in Madurai, Tamil Nadu in Southern India to Shri Narayanan Sitaraman and Savitri in a Tamil Iyer Brahmin family. She obtained a B.A. degree from Seethalakshmi Ramaswamy College, Tiruchirappalli and an MA degree in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1980 followed by a Ph.D in the Indo-European textile trade within the GATTframework and MPhil. Sitharaman then served at Pricewaterhouse Coopers as a Senior Manager and later for the BBC World Service. She is one of the founding directors of Pranava school in Hyderabad. She was formerly a member of the National Commission for Women.

Family and Personal Background of Nirmala Sitharaman

Nirmala Sitharaman was born to a middle-class family in Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu on August 18, 1959. Her father worked in the Railways while her mother was a homemaker and a great lover of books. She has her father's disciplinary nature and her mother's love for books. She spent her childhood in different parts of Tamil Nadu as her father's job was transferable. Thus, travelling and being adaptive came naturally to her.

She completed her graduation from Seethalakshmi Ramasamy College, Tiruchirappalli and obtained her masters from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her favourite subject was globalisation and its impact on developing countries. It is this that led her to become the Commerce Minister of the Indian government. She married Parakala Prabhakar in 1986 and the couple moved to London. Sitharaman succeeded in the corporate world there but finally came back to India in 1991. The couple is blessed with a daughter.

Political career

Nirmala Sitharaman joined Narendra Modi's ministry in May 2014. Until then, she was working as a part of a team of six spokespersons headed by Ravi Shankar Prasad, for Bharatiya Janata Party congress .

She joined the BJP in 2006 even as her husband Dr. Parakala Prabhakar joined the Prajarajyam party floated by filmstar Chiranjeevi in 2007. While her husband grew disillusioned with Chiranjeevi's party and felt the need to quit the PRP that spoke of social justice. In the early 2000s, Dr Prabhakar was the spokesperson of the Andhra Pradesh unit of the BJP. Meanwhile, Nirmala was slowly gaining in popularity in the BJP. It was during Nitin Gadkari's tenure as BJP president that Nirmala Sitharaman was enlisted as one of the six party spokespersons in March 2010.

Since then, she has been a regular on the news TV channels defending her BJP and its leaders including Narendra Modi. Interestingly, as party spokesperson, she became quite popular in the Modi-ruled Gujarat than in Delhi, where the BJP headquarters is based.

As a visible spokesperson of the BJP, Nirmala played an important role in the run up to the 2014 elections by effectively projecting the Modi-for-PM message. And even before the elections were held, it was a mass presumption in political circles that if the NDA indeed came to power, then Nirmala would make it to the Narendra Modi cabinet. In an election that not many thought would be that one-sided, the BJP vanquished the Congress with the former managing to get a simple majority on its own.

On May 26 2016, Nirmala Sitharaman was sworn in as Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Ministry of Commerce & Industry, as well as a Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs which fall under the Ministry of Finance headed by Arun Jaitley. She Contested and won a bye-election to the Rajya Sabha from the state of Andhra Pradesh.

On 29 May 2016, she was one among the 12 candidates nominated by the BJP to contest the Rajya Sabha elections due on 11 June 2016. She successfully contested the elections from Karnataka.