Jairam Ramesh

Former Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Minister of Rural Development

Date of Birth: 09/04/1954
Place of Birth: Chikmagalur

Jairam Ramesh’s career has taken him to the top of government and politics in India. Now he has expanded his remit to economic relations with Africa. On 6-7 October 2008, he led a business delegation to the fifth Ethio-India Joint Trade Committee meeting in Addis Ababa. The talks produced a US$640 million line of credit to build three sugar factories in Tendaho. The two sides discussed a renewed trade and double taxation avoidance agreements. Ethiopia is already included, with 33 other African countries, in India’s duty-free tariff preference scheme for exports to India. India’s trade surplus with Ethiopia was also addressed.

Alongside Ramesh, India’s Ambassador to Addis Ababa, Gurjit Singh, worked hard to boost Delhi’s relations with Ethiopia. This year marks the 60th anniversary of formal bilateral relations between the two states and Ambassador Singh has organised celebratory events across Ethiopia. One high point was the invitation to Premier Meles Zenawi to deliver the Mahatma Gandhi lecture.

Ramesh was advisor to Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in the early 1990s, as Rao introduced sweeping economic reforms. He then worked in the Planning Commission. Subsequently, Ramesh joined the India National Congress Party and was elected as a member of the Rajya Sabha (parliament) in June 2004. In addition to representing Andhra Pradesh, India’s fourth-largest state, Ramesh has for several years been a secretary of the All India Congress Committee, the core leadership of the INC. He heads its economic policy unit.

Ramesh studied mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, where he graduated in 1975. He later studied public management at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, and then technology policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A frequent newspaper columnist and former speechwriter for the INC’s Sonia Gandhi, he is the author of Making Sense of Chindia (2005), a collection of essays on the competition – and potential for cooperation – between Asia’s giants.