Nirmala Sitharaman (born 18 August 1959)[1] is an Indian economist, politician and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) serving as the Minister of Finance and Minister of Corporate Affairs of the Government of India since 2019.

[13][14][15] She then enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Economics with a focus on Indo-European trade but later left this program and moved to London when her husband secured a scholarship at the London School of Economics because of which she was unable to complete her degree.

In 2014, she was inducted into Narendra Modi's cabinet as a junior minister and was elected in June of that year as a Rajya Sabha Member from Andhra Pradesh.

[18][19][20] In May 2016, she was one of the 12 candidates nominated by the BJP to contest the Rajya Sabha elections due on 11 June.

[31][32] Under her tenure as the finance minister in 2022, India became the Fifth largest Economy in the world, and the GDP of the country was said to have seen massive growth positively with historical context.

[33][34] In February 2024, she presented the Union budget for the record 6th time and matched it with Morarji Desai.

[36][37] Nirmala Sitharaman worked as a salesperson at Habitat, a home decor store in London's Regent Street.

During her stay in the UK, she has also served as a Senior Manager (R&D)[39] for PWC and briefly at the BBC World Service.

In 2023, ranked at number 32, Sitharaman has made it to the list of Forbes Magazine's 100 most powerful women in the world for the fifth time in a row.

Sitharaman met her husband, economist and commentator Parakala Prabhakar, who is from Narsapuram, Andhra Pradesh, while studying at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.