Shashi Tharoor

Indian Minister of State for External Affairs

Shashi Tharoor was educated at St Stephen's College, Dehli and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He began his political career working with the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, before working as a senior official at the UN headquarters in New York. In the late 1990s he was assistant to the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and rose to the position of Under-Secretary-General, working for the resolution of the Yugoslav civil wars.

In 2009, he assumed his current positions as a member of the Indian Parliament from the Trivandrum Constituency of Kerala and Indian Minister of State for External Affairs.

Tharoor has written a number of novels, including Riot (2001), and Show Business (1992), and non-fiction works such as The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cell Phone: Reflections on India in the 21st Century (2007). As a journalist he has contributed to The Hindu newspaper and The Indian Express, and his book reviews have been published in The Washington Post and The New York Times.