New Delhi: Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday took charge as the Union Finance Minister, the second woman to hold the position after Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister who held the additional charge of Finance Ministry in 1970-71.
Sitharaman, 60, succeeds Arun Jaitley, who opted out of the new government on health grounds.
By holding the most challenging assignment for this government, she will now have to steer the country out of an imminent economic slowdown and address challenges like job creation, mounting bad loans and stimulating investment.
The day brought a series of bad news on the economy for the minister with data showing India’s GDP growth slowed to a five-year low of 5.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2018-19, pushing India behind China. The unemployment rate for 2017-18 also rose to a 45-year high of 6.1 per cent. The growth of the eight core sector industries—which contribute about 40 per cent to the overall factory output--flagged to 2.6 per cent. A silver lining was that the fiscal deficit for 2018-19 remained within the revised Budget target of 3.4 per cent of the GDP.
Sitharaman was Union Defence Minister in Modi 1.0 and under her watch India carried out air strikes targeting terror-training camps in Pakistan-based terror hub Balakot. The Balakot strikes were a big rallying point for the BJP as it campaign.
Sitharaman, considered a protege of Jaitley, held the charge of Minister of State for Finance and MoS independent charge of Commerce Ministry in 2014.
Subsequently, in September 2017, she was appointed India’s Defence Minister– he first woman to hold the portfolio.
Sitharaman, an alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University and London School of Economics, was born on August 18, 1959 in the temple town of Madurai, Tamil Nadu. She did her schooling and graduation in Economics from Seethalakshmi Rama-swamy College in Tiruchirapalli. She did her Masters in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Sitharaman served as an Assistant to Economist in the Agricultural Engineers Association, UK. She subsequently worked as Senior Manager (Research and Analysis) with Price Waterhouse, London. During this time she also briefly worked with BBC World Service.
Sitharaman joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2008, and was made a member of the National Executive. She was nominated as party spokesperson in March 2010 and has been a full time party worker since then.
