New Delhi: Hardened by a term in prison as a student leader and polished over a career as a successful and urbane courtroom lawyer, Arun Jaitley, India's new finance minister, could prove an effective foil for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The 61-year-old has also been given the important portfolio of defence, making him the most powerful member of Modi's cabinet. Yet, he lost his parliamentary seat in the general election, one of the few blots on an otherwise stunning victory for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that has swept to power with its first-ever parliamentary majority.
Finance is arguably the most crucial portfolio in Modi's new government as it seeks to drag India out of its economic torpor and create enough jobs for the 10 million young people who join the workforce each year. Jaitley was long the front-runner to run the ministry, but the additional charge of the powerful defence portfolio came as a surprise.
Personally close to the intensely private Modi, and commerce minister in the last BJP government more than a decade ago, party sources said Jaitley's place at the high table was never really in doubt, despite the humiliation of losing his seat.
His polish, Western-style education and strong command of English makes him an effective foil to the rough-hewn Modi in articulating the government's position to foreign investors, captains of industry and the Reserve Bank of India governor.
A patrician figure who would not be out of place in London's High Court, Jaitley is the son of a successful lawyer. He was educated in an elite New Delhi school and at the prestigious Delhi University, where he was a students union leader in the youth wing of the BJP.
Born into a family that migrated to India from Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947, Jaitley headed the Delhi University student union and the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the BJP.
He has represented multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. in court. Since 2002, he has emerged as a leading party strategist, scripting several of its victories in state elections.
As minister in charge of trade in the last BJP government, he led India in talks at the World Trade Organization, blocking attempts by developed countries to gain greater access to emerging markets without reducing agricultural subsidies.
He takes charge of an economy, Asia's third largest, that is battling its longest slowdown since the 1980s. Growth has almost halved to under 5 percent in the past two years - too slow to create enough jobs for aspirational young Indians.
One of Jaitley's first tasks will be to deliver a revised budget that deals with the fiscal fallout of India's slowdown and addresses a deficit that Chidambaram capped by putting off spending.
Compiled from Reuters
