Nirmala Sitaraman India’s First full-time Defence and Finance minister.
The former spokesperson of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is currently the senior-most woman in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet. She was ranked 34th in Forbes’ list of Most Powerful Women in the World In 2019. Nirmala became the first female to be appointed as full time Defence minister in 2017. Her term as the Defence Minister was agitated with the Government facing the Rafale deal. However, she was significant in establishing industrial Defence corridors in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, and other successful plans. She was born in Tiruchirapalli to a middle class family in Tamil Nadu. Her father worked in the Railways, so she had to spend her childhood in different parts of the state.
She did her graduation in JNU 1984, Delhi and from that’s where she met her husband Dr. Parakala Prabhakar. They got married in 1986 and soon relocated to London. She acquired her Ph.D. from London school of Economics while working as a sales girl at a home décor store, followed by and worked as a translator in BBC Radio’s Tamil division. Later she worked as an analyst at the research division of the consulting firm price waterhouse. In 1991, the couple returned to India. She gave birth to a girl and was keen on raising the child in India. The couple settled in Hyderabad and started a school for unprivileged children. She was interested in the subject of women empowerment. In 2003, during PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure, she became NCW’s member till 2005.
Despite the fact that her in-laws were completely pro-congress but she still chose to join BJP in 2006 and became its national spokesperson and since 2010, she is a member of Rajyasabha. Earlier, she was a member of the National Women Commission. Her husband also served as a communication advisor to Andhra Pradesh’s former Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu.
Nirmala Sitharaman left from the traditions when she dumped the colonial briefcase and chose a red cloth bag to carry the Union Budget papers in 2019. Chief Economic Advisor Subramanian, said that her move symbolized departure from slavery of Western thought. In her shortest ever Budget 2021 speech, Sitharaman announced a jump in capital expenditure, more spending on infrastructure and the doubling of the spending on health. Started her Budget 2021 speech in parliament with the words of Tagore – the poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher and musician from Bengal who became the first non-European Literature Laureate in 1913. “I borrow the words of Rabindranath Tagore – ‘Faith is the word that feels the lights and sings when the dawn is still dark’,” the minister said.
Her daughter Vangmayi has grown to become a successful journalist, writer. Nirmala is an ardent devotee of lord Krishna and has profound love for classical music. She is not very fluent in Hindi but her command over the English language is exceptional. Nirmala Sitharaman was the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2019 by JNU.
Nirmala Sitharaman is one of the strongest women that India has witnessed. Beginning from the first full-time female Finance Minister to grasping several positions in the Union Cabinet, Sitharaman is a person whom all of the females in the country must inspire. From a normal Madurai girl to the finance minister it was a path for Nirmala to tread.
