Jaswant Singh

Indian politician and MP

Indian politician and eight-term Member of Parliament, Jaswant Singh has headed six core Ministries of the Government of India. He served as Finance Minister in the short-lived government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, which lasted just from May 1996 to June 1996. After Vajpayee became Prime Minister again two years later, he became Minister for External Affairs of India, serving from December 1998 until July 2002. Responsible for foreign policy, he dealt with high tensions between India and Pakistan.

In July 2002 he became Finance Minister again, switching posts with Yashwant Sinha. He served as Finance Minister until the defeat of the Vajpayee government in May 2004 and was instrumental in defining and pushing through the market-friendly reforms of the government. He was conferred the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award for the year 2001, and is the author of eighteen books, the most recent being Jinnah – India, Partition, Independence (2009). After criticism over remarks made in this book he was expelled from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in August 2009.

Singh is also a Senior Fellow at Harvard, and a visiting Professor at Oxford and Warwick universities. He has contributed widely to Indian and foreign magazines, newspapers and journals on international affairs, and security and development issues.