Jairam Ramesh (born 9 April 1954) is an Indian politician belonging to Indian National Congress. He is a Member of Parliament representing Karnataka state in the Rajya Sabha. In July 2011, Jairam was elevated to the Union Council of Ministers of India and appointed Minister of Rural Development and Minister (additional charge) of the new Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. However, in the cabinet reshuffle in October 2012, he has been divested of the portfolio of Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. He was previously the Indian Minister of State (Independent Charge) at the Ministry of Environment and Forests from May 2009 to July 2011. Personal Jairam Ramesh was born on 9 April 1954 in Chikmagalur, Karnataka, India. His father was C. K. Ramesh, and his mother, Sridevi Ramesh. His father was a Professor of Civil Engineering in IIT Bombay. He considers himself a practising Hindu with Buddhism ingrained and calls himself a 'Hind-Budh'. He married K. R. Jayashree on 26 January 1981. He currently resides at Lodi Gardens, Rajesh Pilot Marg, New Delhi. Till his election to Rajya Sabha from Karnataka in July 2016, his permanent residence was at Khairatabad, Hyderabad, Telangana. His wife died in early 2019. Since childhood, Jairam has been strongly influenced by Jawaharlal Nehru. He was fascinated by Nehru's modern approach to life, his bringing change in a traditional society and his liberal, humanist, rational approach to life, religion, men and civic matters. He considers himself a product of the Nehruvian era in many ways. An additional influence was Mahatma Gandhi, whom he originally saw as anti-modern, anti-science and anti-West. As he grew older and read Gandhi more and viewed him in the political and historical context in which he operated, he came to appreciate and acknowledge Gandhi much more. He has also studied Rabindranath Tagore deeply. Education Jairam attended St. Xavier's School, Ranchi in 1961–1963 in classes 3 to 5. He read Paul Samuelson (an American economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1970) and found him very interesting. His presentation, the substance of issues such as population and growth got him thinking of economics and the larger issues of life. Also when he was 17, in 1971, he read Asian Drama, one of the early books of Gunnar Myrdal (a Swedish economist who won the Nobel Prize in 1974) and wrote to him at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Myrdal sent