Jairam Ramesh (born 9 April 1954) is an Indian politician of the Indian National Congress, an economist and an author. An engineer by training, he worked as a government adviser during the 1991 economic reforms before entering politics. He was Minister of Environment and Forests from 2009 to 2011 and of Rural Development from 2011 to 2014, and he is the party’s general secretary in charge of communications.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Jairam Ramesh |
| Born | 9 April 1954, Chikmagalur, Karnataka, India |
| Age | 72 |
| Party | Indian National Congress |
| Offices | Minister of Environment and Forests (2009–2011); Rural Development (2011–2014) |
| Parliament | Rajya Sabha (since 2004) |
| Education | IIT Bombay (B.Tech. Mechanical Engineering, 1975); Carnegie Mellon University (M.S.); Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Spouse | K. R. Jayashree (d. 2019) |
| Children | 2 sons |
Early Life
Ramesh was born in Chikmagalur. His father, C. K. Ramesh, was a professor of civil engineering at IIT Bombay. He studied at St. Xavier’s School in Ranchi, graduated from IIT Bombay and took a master’s degree in public policy at Carnegie Mellon. He began a doctorate at MIT but returned to India for family reasons.
Career
After a short spell at the World Bank he worked in the Planning Commission and several ministries. In 1991 he was an officer on special duty to Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao during the first weeks of the economic reforms, a period he later described in a book. He advised Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in the late 1990s and coined the term “Chindia” for the combined rise of China and India.
He helped write the Congress manifesto for 2004 and entered the Rajya Sabha that year. As Environment Minister he held public hearings before placing a moratorium on Bt brinjal in 2010, blocked mining by Vedanta in Odisha’s Niyamgiri hills and took a more flexible line in international climate talks. As Rural Development Minister he piloted the Land Acquisition Act of 2013 and campaigned for sanitation, saying India needed toilets more than temples.
He has been the Congress’s head of communications since 2022 and was a key organiser of Rahul Gandhi‘s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
Books
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was Jairam Ramesh born?
Jairam Ramesh was born on 9 April 1954 in Chikmagalur, Karnataka, India and is 72 years old.
Featured image: Jairam Ramesh, then Minister for Rural Development, addresses a press conference, New Delhi, 7 September 2011. Photo by Ministry of Rural Development, licensed under Government Open Data License – India, via Wikimedia Commons.
