Jairam Ramesh is an Indian economist and politician belonging to Indian National Congress. He is a Member of Parliament representing Andhra Pradesh state in the Rajya Sabha since June 2004.
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Jairam was born on 9 April 1954, in Karnataka's Chikmagalur city. His father, C K Ramesh, was a Professor of Civil Engineering in IIT Bombay. Ramesh went to St. Xavier's School in Ranchi. He was inspired by the thoughts of the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal and his American counterpart, Paul Samuelson. Jawaharlal Nehru's outlook and views about society, religion and culture had a deep impact on Ramesh. After completing B. Tech in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1975, he went on to receive a Master's Degree in Public Policy and Public Management from Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College between 1975-77. In the following year, he enrolled himself at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied economics, engineering, management and technology policy. In 1981, he married K R Jayashree. The couple has two sons. Immediately after completing his education, Ramesh joined the World Bank for a brief time, before starting to work as an assistant to an economist, Lovraj Kumar from December 1979. He had to wait for almost two decades before he could join politics in its truest sense. In 1998, he finished his stint as an advisor to the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram. It was during the Vajpayee regime that he enrolled himself in Congress as a full-time party worker.