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Mr. P. Chidambaram
Finance Minister, India

Mr. P. Chidambaram is the Finance Minister of India in the Congress-led UPA government (2004-2009). He was elected to the Lok Sabha in 2004 from Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu, the constituency from which he was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1984.

He was Minister of State for Commerce and also for Personnel from 1985 to 89 in Rajiv Gandhi's ministry and was Minister of State for Commerce with independent charge from 1991 to 1996 in the Narasimha Rao government. He was Finance Minister from 1996 to 1998 in the United Front government.

An MBA graduate from Harvard, he started as a leftist, went on to be an architect of the Congress government's economic reform strategies as Rajiv Gandhi's right hand man, and has today ascended to the post of India's Finance Minister with the new United Progressive Alliance Government, after a brief spell as Finance Minister in the mid 90s, as part of the short lived United Front government.

In 1996, Mr. P. Chidambaram quit the Congress over its decision to ally with AIADMK and joined the Tamil Maanila Congress. In 2001 he broke away from TMC and formed his own party, Congress Jananayaka Peravai. CJP has since merged with the Indian National Congress, and in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections Mr. Chidambaram was elected on a Congress symbol.

Economists acclaim his "dream-budget" for 1996-97, in which he brought discipline in government spending and launched an ambitious tax reform programme to tackle an unwieldy fiscal deficit, went a long way in improving the economic conditions of the country in that time. His unconventional scheme to halt tax evasion, or Voluntary Income Disclosure Scheme, invited accolades from all over the nation.

Mr. P. Chidambaram has emerged as a successful Finance Minister time and again and has proved his ability to take the Indian economy to new heights.

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