S Jaishankar

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is an Indian diplomat-turned-politician who is serving as the current Minister of External Affairs in the Government of India. He is a member of the BJP who is a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat. He has served as the Foreign Secretary from January 2015-January 2018.

Born on January 9, 1955, in New Delhi to strategic affairs analyst, commentator, and civil servant K. Subrahmanyam and Sulochana, Jaishankar is the brother of historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam and S. Vijay Kumar, former Rural Development Secretary of India.

He has an MA in Political Science and an M.Phil and PhD in International Relations from JNU. He is married to Kyoko, who is of Japanese origin and they have three children. Jaishankar joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1977. He has served as the Indian Ambassador to the United States, China and the Czech Republic, and as the High Commissioner to Singapore. Jaishankar also had played a key role in negotiating the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement.

On retirement, he had joined Tata Sons as the President, Global Corporate Affairs. In 2019, he was conferred with Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of the country. On May 30, 2019, he was sworn in as a Cabinet minister in the second Modi ministry. He is the first former foreign secretary to head the Ministry of External Affairs at the Cabinet-level.