1) Born on 11th December 1935, West Bengal, he is only 5 feet 1 inches.
2) He is known to be a voracious reader and he usually starts reading three books simultaneously.
3) He was involved in handling Taslima Nasreen’s house arrest in Delhi, as the Foreign Minister and thus faced criticism for eventual departure of hers from India in 2008.
4) He has been married for 55 years and has two sons and a daughter.
5) He has been a college teacher in his public career.
6) According to a survey in 1984, Euromoney magazine rated him as the best Finance Minister of the world.
7) He is inspired by Den Xiaoping and also had quoted him quite often.
8) He is known to work an average of 18 hours a day.
9) His hobbies include reading, gardening and music.
10) He has presented seven budgets till now.
11) In 2010, he was awarded “Finance Minister of the year for Asia” by Emerging Markets which is a daily newspaper of record for the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund).
12) He has been writing a diary for the past forty years.
13) He already has served India as the Finance Minister, Minister of External Affairs, Minister of Defence and the Deputy Chairperson of the Planning Commission.
14) He also played the central role in the implementation of the Indo-Us civilian nuclear agreement.
15) Many media accounts describe him as having “a reputation as a number-crunching politician with a phenomenal memory and an unerring survival instinct”.
16) High school education in his village school and later studied by Vidyasagar College.
17) He holds a masters degree in History and Political Science.
