Yashwant Sinha

Yashwant Sinha
Yashwant Sinha in 2000
Indian Minister for External Affairs
In office 1 July 2002 – 22 May 2004
Prime Minister	Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Preceded by	Jaswant Singh
Succeeded by	Natwar Singh
Personal details
Born	(1937-11-06) 6 November 1937[1] Patna, Bihar, British India[1]
Political party	Bharatiya Janata Party
Spouse(s)	Nilima Sinha
Children	Jayant Sinha Sumant Sinha
Religion	Hinduism
Website	yashwantsinha.in

Yashwant Sinha (born 6 November 1937) is an Indian politician and a former finance minister of India (1990–1991 under Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar and March 1998 – July 2002 under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee)^[2] and foreign minister (July 2002 – May 2004)^[3] in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's cabinet. He is a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is now the single most dominant party of the Indian parliament after the 2014 general election. His son Jayant Sinha, a consultant and investor, won the 2014 elections for the Hazaribagh constituency and currently serving Minister of State in Finance in Narendra Modi's cabinet.

Early life

Sinha was born in Patna, Bihar into a Kayastha family.^[4] He received his Master's degree in Political Science in 1958.^[1] Subsequently, he taught the subject at the University of Patna till 1960.

Civil Service career

Sinha joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1960 and spent over 24 years holding important posts during his service tenure. He served as Sub-Divisional Magistrate and District Magistrate for 4 years. He was Under Secretary and Deputy Secretary in the Finance Department of the Bihar Government for 2 years after which he worked in the Ministry of Commerce as Deputy Secretary to the Government of India.

From 1971 to 1973, he was First Secretary (Commercial) in the Indian Embassy, Bonn, Germany. Subsequently, he worked as Consul General of India in Frankfurt from 1973 to 1974. After working for over seven years in this field, he acquired experience in matters relating to foreign trade and India's relations with the European Economic Community. Thereafter, he worked in the Department of Industrial Infrastructure, Government of Bihar State and in the Ministry of Industry, government of India dealing with foreign industrial collaborations, technology imports, intellectual property rights and industrial approvals.

He later was Joint Secretary to Government of India in the Ministry of Surface Transport from 1980 to 1984, his main responsibilities were road transport, ports and shipping. He resigned from service in 1984.

Political career

Janata Dal

Sinha resigned from the Indian Administrative Service in 1984 and joined active politics as a member of the Janata Party. He was appointed All-India General secretary of the party in 1986 and was elected Member of the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of the Indian Parliament) in 1988.

When the Janata Dal was formed in 1989, he was appointed General Secretary of the party. He worked as Minister of Finance from November 1990 to June 1991 in Chandra Shekhar's Cabinet.

BJP

He became the National Spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party in June 1996. He was appointed finance minister in March 1998. In his autobiography Drohkaal ka Pathik, released in November 2013, former MP Pappu Yadav alleged that three MPs of his Indian Federal Democratic Party got money from the then finance minister Sinha, to join the NDA in 2001.^[5] He was appointed as Minister for External Affairs on 1 July 2002. In the Lok Sabha elections of 2004, he was defeated in Hazaribagh Constituency. He re-entered the Parliament in 2005. On 13 June 2009, he resigned from the post of vice-president of BJP.^[6]

Finance minister

Sinha speaking at World Economic Forum on East Asia in 2008

Sinha was the finance minister until 1 July 2002, when he exchanged jobs with foreign minister Jaswant Singh. Sinha, during his tenure, was forced to roll back some of his government's major policy initiatives for which he was much criticised.^[7] Still, Sinha is widely credited for pushing through several major reform measures that put the Indian economy on a firm growth trajectory. Among them are lowering of real interest rates, introducing tax deduction for mortgage interest, freeing up the telecommunications sector, helping fund the National Highways Authority, and deregulating the petroleum industry. Sinha is also known for being the first Finance Minister to break the 53-year tradition of presenting the Indian budget at 5 pm local time, a practice held over from British Rule days that sought to present the Indian budget at a time convenient to the British Parliament (1130a GMT) rather than India's Parliament.

Sinha has written a comprehensive account of his years as Finance Minister titled Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer.^[8]

Yashwant Sinha has been accused by opponents, and by other political observers of trying to promote nepotism by nominating his son Jayant Sinha as a successor to contest from Hazaribagh overlooking the interests of many other loyal party workers, though he tried to justify the nomination of his son as a party decision.^[9]

Personal life

Sinha has a wide range of interests including reading, gardening and meeting people. He has widely travelled and has led a number of political and social delegations. He played a leading role in many negotiations on behalf of India. Sinha's wife is Nilima Sinha, one of India's leading children's writers and President, Association of Writers and Illustrators for Children.^[10] He has a daughter, Sharmila who is a writer and married to Ashok Kantha, an Indian Foreign Service officer.^[11] He has two sons, Jayant and Sumant. Jayant Sinha is an Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) and Harvard Business School graduate.^[12] He was a partner in McKinsey & Company and later a managing director at Omidyar Network.^[13] Jayant also contested elections for Member of Parliament from Yashwant Sinha's home constituency of Hazaribagh, which he won by a margin of 159,128 votes, getting a total of 406,931 in his favour.^[14] Sumant Sinha is also an alumnus of IIT Delhi, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, and was a Dean's Fellow at The School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. He is the founder and chairman of ReNew Power, a renewable energy power producer.^[15] Yashwant has five grandchildren named Siddhant, Aashir, Tarushi, Devansh and Rishabh.

Yashwant Sinha blogs under the title Musings of a Swadeshi Reformer.^[16]

References