Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Cabinet Minister, External Affairs: Ex-Indian ambassador to US has PhD in international relations

Born 9 January, 1955 in New Delhi, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar was appointed the Minister of External Affairs. He is an India Foreign Service officer who served as a former India ambassador to the US, foreign secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, along with with several others key positions. He graduated from Delhi University’s St Stephen’s College and holds master’s degrees in political science and international relations. He also has a PhD in international relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University with a specialisation in nuclear diplomacy. His father K Subrahmanyan was the author of India’s nuclear doctrine. Jaishankar joined the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in 1977. His first international posting was to Moscow where he served as the third and then second secretary at the Indian Embassy. In 1985, he was appointed as the first secretary in the Indian Embassy in Washington. During his tenure with the MEA, he worked as first secretary and political advisor to the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka (1988), commercial counsellor in the embassy to Hungary (1990). The biggest USP of Jaishankar is that he was not only the chief architect of the India-US nuclear deal, and thus close to the American officials, but also has a very good equation with the Chinese after having served in Beijing as ambassador. In 2015, he was made the foreign secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and retired from the post in January 2018. During his tenure in the Ministry of External Affairs, Jaishankar was responsible for India’s open engagement with the US-led Western world, keeping aside the now irrelevant stance of non-alignment, India’s embrace of “regional initiatives” by focussing on regional initiatives like BIMSTEC, after SAARC remained a non-starter after 2016. He is also responsible for the upswing in India-Israel relations as Modi became the first prime minister to visit the Jewish state. At the end of the three-day visit, India had upgraded its relationship with Israel to a strategic partnership.