Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman

Nirmala Sitharaman is an Indian politician and Finance Minister of India. served as the current Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of India. She is a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, since 2014. Sitharaman formerly served as the Defence Minister of India, thereby becoming India’s second female defense minister and also the second female finance minister after Indira Gandhi and the first full-time female Finance Minister. She has served as the Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs under the Ministry of Finance and the Minister for Commerce and Industry with independent charge. Prior to that, she served as a national spokesperson for the BJP. Nirmala Sitharaman was born in the Tamil Iyengar Brahmin family in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, to Savitri and Narayanan Sitharaman. Her father hailed from Musiri, Tiruchirappalli, while her mother’s family had its roots in Thiruvenkadu, and in the Thanjavur and Salem districts of Tamil Nadu. Her father was an employee of Indian Railways and hence she spent her childhood in various parts of the state. She had her schooling from Madras and Tiruchirappalli. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics at the Seethalakshmi Ramaswami College, Tiruchirapalli in 1980, Master of Arts degree in economics and M.Phil. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi in 1984. She then enrolled for a Ph.D. in economics with a focus on Indo-Europe trade, but a move to London after her husband secured a scholarship in London School of Economics left her unable to complete the degree.