A PLACE FOR THE CHIP

Union electronics and information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's entry into the Narendra Modi cabinet within two years of joining politics was seen with scepticism. However, with his background in civil service and business, the tech-savvy minister has emerged as Modi's Man Friday when it comes to working for India's semiconductor ambitions

- Abdul Haleem Sherif

India’s efforts to enter the global semiconductor chip manufacturing domain got a shot in the arm this year when US-based chipmaking giant Micron Technology began the construction of its $2.75 billion semiconductor plant in Sanand in Gujarat.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s followers hail him for his enthusiasm in trying to make India a global semiconductor manufacturing hub, the role of his trusted lieutenant, Union minister of electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, has not gone unnoticed.

Vaishnaw is unlike most other Union ministers before him. When he took charge at the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in July 2021, he had been a parliamentarian for barely two years. Neither did he have any ministerial experience, nor did he have much sway within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). After all, he joined it only after receiving the Rajya Sabha nomination from Odisha in 2019. He was elected unopposed to the upper house, thanks to the support from the Biju Janata Dal.

Vaishnaw brought to the table at MeitY his decadeplus experience as a bureaucrat, coupled with his Ivy League pedigree and familiarity with global corporate structures. He completed M.Tech from IIT, Kanpur, and joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1994 as an Odisha cadre officer.

By 2003, he was walking in the highest corridors of power when he joined the office of then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as a deputy secretary. Later, he took a hefty loan to pursue MBA at the Wharton Business School in the US. On his return to India, he exited civil service and took up top managerial roles in multinational corporations like General Electric and Siemens one after the other. Before eventually making his foray into politics, the Jodhpur-born engineer even had entrepreneurial stints in Gujarat.