Jairam Ramesh

Jairam Ramesh is an Indian politician of the National Congress (INC). In the Cabinet Manmohan Singh II, he was Minister of the Environment from 2009 to 2011, and from 2011 to 2014 he served as Minister of Rural Development. Ramesh is a Brahmin and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 he was campaign manager of INC and contributed in this role significantly to the victory of the party in the parliamentary election in 2004.

In an interview with Time in June 2015, he pleaded for "not too fast" economic growth in India. In the past, he had also been an "economic hardliner" until, as Environment Minister, he got to know the price of growth - the ruined forests, the landscapes that were sacrificed for coal mining, and the contaminated Ganges.