Who's who in India

President of India

Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil
Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil was born on December 19, 1934 in Nadgaon village of Jalgaon District, Maharashtra. Smt. Patil assumed office as the 12th President of India on July 25, 2007. She is the first woman to have been elected to this august office. Immediately prior to election as the President of India, Smt. Patil was the Governor of Rajasthan from November 8, 2004 till June 21, 2007.

Smt. Patil received her early education from RR Vidyalaya, Jalgaon and later obtained her Master’s degree in Political Science and Economics from the Mooljee Jetha College, Jalgaon. Later, she obtained the degree of Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Government Law College, Bombay (Mumbai).

Smt. Patil started her professional career as a practicing lawyer at the Jalgaon District Court and simultaneously devoted herself to various social activities, especially, for the upliftment of poor women.

Smt. Patil has represented India in various international fora. She attended the International Council on Social Welfare conferences at Nairobi and at Puerto Rico. She was a Member of the AICC(I) delegation to Bulgaria in 1985 and represented as Member, Commonwealth Presiding Officers Conference in London in 1988. She led the Indian delegation to the Conference on the ‘Status of Women’ in Austria and was a delegate at the World Women’s Conference, Beijing, China in September 1995.

Throughout her public life, Smt. Patil has worked actively for the welfare of women and children and the underprivileged sections of society. For their benefit, she established several institutions for them. To name a few, she had set up hostels for working women in Mumbai and Delhi, an Engineering College at Jalgaon for rural youth, the Shram Sadhana Trust which takes part in multifarious welfare activities for development of women, an Industrial Training School for the visually handicapped in Jalgaon, schools for poor children of Vimukta Jatis (Nomadic Tribes) and for children of Backward Classes in Amravati District and a Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farmers’ Training Centre) at Amravati, Maharashtra. She played a pioneering role in setting up the Mahila Vikas Mahamandal, a Maharashtra State Government undertaking for the development of women.

Vice President of India

Mohammed Hamid Ansari Mohammed Hamid Ansari was born on April 1, 1937 in Kolkata. His family originally belongs to Ghazipur (UP) but his father was staying in Kolkata. He is the grand-nephew of Dr. Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari, who was President of the Indian National Congress in 1927 (Madras Session) and founding member of Jamia Millia Islamia. He was elected as the 13th Vice President of India on 10 August 2007 and took office on 11 August 2007.

Mr. Ansari completed his primary education from St Edwards High School in Shimla then he joined St. Xavier College, Kolkata and later joined Aligarh Muslim University for higher education. He was a part of AMU cricket team during his student life and was wicket-keeper in the cricket team. After completing his education he joined teaching at AMU Aligarh.

Ansari started his career as a civil servant in the Indian Foreign Service in 1961. He was Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, Indian High Commissioner to Australia and Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. He was awarded the Padma Shree in 1984. He was also the Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University from May 2000 to March 2002. He is known for his role in ensuring compensation to the victims of the Gujarat riots and pushing for a complete re-look into the relief and rehabilitation for riot victims since 1984.

He had also served as Convener and later Chairman of The Advisory Committee for Oil Diplomacy of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. He was a Permanent Representative to the United Nations. After retirement from Indian Foreign Services, he joined as a visiting Professor at the Centre for West Asian and African Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Academy for Third World Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

In May 2002, he was appointed as Vice-Chancellor of his alma mater, Aligarh Muslim University. He served as AMU Vice-Chancellor from 28th May 2000 to 30th March, 2002. Ansari was the chairman of a working group on "Confidence building measures across segments of society in the State," established by the Second Round Table Conference of the Prime Minister on Jammu and Kashmir in 2006. Ansari became the chairman of India's National Commission for Minorities (NCM) on 6 March, 2006. In June 2007, Ansari, in his capacity as NCM chairman, upheld the decision of India's premier educational institution, St. Stephens College, to earmark a small percentage of seats for Dalit Christians. Ansari resigned as NCM chairman soon after his nomination for the post of India's Vice President.

Prime Minister of India

Dr. Manmohan Singh

India’s fourteenth Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh is rightly acclaimed as a thinker and a scholar. He is well regarded for his diligence and his academic approach to work, as well as his accessibility and his unassuming demeanour.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was born on September 26, 1932, in a village in the Punjab province of undivided India. Dr. Singh completed his Matriculation examinations from the Punjab University in 1948. His academic career took him from Punjab to the University of Cambridge, UK, where he earned a First Class Honours degree in Economics in 1957. Dr. Singh followed this with a D. Phil in Economics from Nuffield College at Oxford University in 1962. His book, “India's Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth” [Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964] was an early critique of India's inward-oriented trade policy.

Dr. Singh’s academic credentials were burnished by the years he spent on the faculty of Punjab University and the prestigious Delhi School of Economics. He had a brief stint at the UNCTAD Secretariat as well, during these years. This presaged a subsequent appointment as Secretary General of the South Commission in Geneva between 1987 and 1990.

In 1971, Dr. Singh joined the Government of India as Economic Advisor in the Commerce Ministry. This was soon followed by his appointment as Chief Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Finance in 1972. Among the many Governmental positions that Dr. Singh has occupied are Secretary in the Ministry of Finance; Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission; Governor of the Reserve Bank of India; Advisor of the Prime Minister; and Chairman of the University Grants Commission.

In what was to become the turning point in the economic history of independent India, Dr. Singh spent five years between 1991 and 1996 as India’s Finance Minister. His role in ushering in a comprehensive policy of economic reforms is now recognized worldwide. In the popular view of those years in India, that period is inextricably associated with the persona of Dr. Singh.

Among the many awards and honours conferred upon Dr. Singh in his public career, the most prominent are India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan (1987); the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Award of the Indian Science Congress (1995); the Asia Money Award for Finance Minister of the Year (1993 and 1994); the Euro Money Award for Finance Minister of the Year (1993), the Adam Smith Prize of the University of Cambridge (1956); and the Wright's Prize for Distinguished Performance at St. John's College in Cambridge (1955). Dr. Singh has also been honoured by a number of other associations including the Japanese Nihon Keizai Shimbun. Dr. Singh is a recipient of honorary degrees from many universities including the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford.

Dr. Singh has represented India at many international conferences and in several international organizations. He has led Indian Delegations to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Cyprus (1993) and to the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993.

In his political career, Dr. Singh has been a Member of India’s Upper House of Parliament (the Rajya Sabha) since 1991, where he was Leader of the Opposition between 1998 and 2004.