Shashi Tharoor (; born 9 March 1956) is an Indian politician, civil servant, author, public intellectual, diplomat, and bureaucrat. A member of the Indian National Congress, he has represented Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, in the Lok Sabha since 2009. He was formerly an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and ran for the office of Secretary-General in 2006, coming second.
Early life and education Shashi Tharoor was born on 9 March 1956 in London, England as Shashi Krishnan Chandrashekaran Tharoor to Chandra Shekharan Nair Tharoor and Sulekha Menon, a Nair couple from Palakkad, Kerala, India. Tharoor has two younger sisters, Shobha and Smitha. Despite, his mother-tongue being Malayalam, he is also fluent in French.
Tharoor's father worked in various positions in London, Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, including a 25-year career (culminating as group advertising manager) for The Statesman. Tharoor's parents returned to India when he was 2-years old, where he joined the Montfort School, Yercaud, in 1962, subsequently moving to Bombay (now Mumbai) and studying at the Campion School (1963–68). He spent his high school years at St. Xavier's Collegiate School, Calcutta (1969–71).
In 1975, Tharoor graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from St. Stephen's College, Delhi, where he had been president of the student union and also founded the St. Stephen's Quiz Club. Within the same year, Tharoor went to the United States to obtain an M.A. in international relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford. After obtaining his M.A. in 1976, Tharoor further obtained his Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy in 1977 and his Ph.D. in International Relations and Affairs in 1978. While he was pursuing his doctorate, Tharoor was awarded the Robert B. Stewart Prize for best student and was also the first editor-in-chief of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs. At the age of 22, he was the youngest person to receive a doctorate in the history of the Fletcher School.
Diplomatic career (1978–2007) Tharoor's career in the United Nations began in 1978 as a staff member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva. From 1981 until 1984 he was head of the UNHCR office in Singapore, during the boat people crisis, leading the organisation's rescue efforts at sea and succeeding in resettling a backlog of Vietnamese refugees. He also processed Polish and Acehnese refugee cases. After a further stint at the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, during which he became the first chairman of the staff elected by UNHCR personnel worldwide, Tharoor left UNHCR. In 1989 he was appointed special assistant to the Under-secretary-general for special political affairs, the unit that later became the Peacekeeping Operations Department in New York. Until 1996, he led the team responsible for peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia, spending considerable time on the ground during the civil war there.
UN Assistant Secretary and Under-Secretary-General In 1996, Tharoor was appointed director of communications and special projects and executive assistant to Secretary-general Kofi Annan. In January 2001, Tharoor was appointed as Interim Head of the Department of Public Information (DPI) at the assistant-secretary-general level. He was subsequently confirmed as the under-secretary-general for communications and public information (UNDPI) with effect from 1 June 2002. In this capacity, he was responsible for the United Nations' communications strategy, enhancing the image and effectiveness of the organisation. In 2003 the secretary-general gave him the additional responsibility of United Nations coordinator for multilingualism. During his tenure at the UNDPI, Tharoor reformed the department and undertook a number of initiatives, ranging from organizing and conducting the first-ever UN seminar on Anti Semitism, the first-ever UN seminar on Islamophobia after the 11 September attacks, and launching an annual list of "Ten Under-Reported Stories the World Ought to Know about", which was last produced in 2008 by his successor.
On 9 February 2007, Tharoor resigned from the post of under-secretary-general and left the UN on 1 April 2007.
2006 campaign for Secretary-General
In 2006, the government of India nominated Tharoor for the post of UN Secretary General. Had he won, the 50-year-old Shashi Tharoor would have become the second-youngest secretary-general, after the 46-year-old Dag Hammarskjöld. Although all previous Secretaries-General had come from small countries, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan felt that Tharoor's candidacy would demonstrate India's willingness to play a larger role at the United Nations.
Tharoor finished second, behind Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, in each of the four straw polls conducted by the UN Security Council. In the final round, Ban emerged as the only candidate not to be vetoed by one of the permanent members, while Tharoor received one veto from the United States. U.S. ambassador John Bolton later revealed his instructions from Condoleezza Rice: "We don't want a strong Secretary-General." Tharoor was a protégé of the independently minded Kofi Annan, and a senior American official told Tharoor that the US was determined to have "No more Kofis." After the vote, Tharoor withdrew his candidacy and declined Ban Ki-moon's invitation to remain in service beyond the expiry of his term as under-secretary-general.
Post-diplomatic career (2007–2009)
In February 2007, amidst speculation about his post-UN future, the Indian press reported that Tharoor might be inducted into the Council of Ministers of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as Minister of State for External Affairs. In the same month, an American gossip blog reported that Tharoor was a finalist for the position of dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles, but he withdrew his name from consideration at the final stage. Instead, Tharoor became chairman of Dubai-based Afras Ventures, which established the Afras Academy for Business Communication (AABC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, the city in which he would go on to win a record four parliamentary elections. He also spoke around the world about India and Kerala, where he spent increasing amounts of time before moving to India in October 2008.
Prior to embarking on his political career, Tharoor also served on the board of overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute, and the advisory boards of the Indo-American Arts Council, the American India Foundation, the World Policy Journal, the Virtue Foundation, and the human rights organisation Breakthrough. At the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1976, he founded and was the first chair of the editorial board of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, a journal examining issues in international relations. Tharoor was an international adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva from 2008 to 2011. He served on the advisory council of the Hague Institute for International Justice and was elected Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities during 1995–96. He also supported various educational causes, including as Patron of GEMS Modern Academy in Dubai.
Political career (2009–present)
In government (2009–2014)
When Tharoor began his political career, he was approached by the Congress, the Communists, and the BJP. He chose the INC because he felt ideologically aligned with the party. In March 2009, Tharoor contested the Indian General elections as a candidate for the Congress Party in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. His opponents included P. Ramachandran Nair of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Neelalohitadasan Nadar of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), MP Gangadharan of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and PK Krishna Das of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Despite criticism that he was an "elite outsider", Tharoor won the elections by a margin of 99,989. He was then selected as a minister of state in the Council of Ministers of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. On 28 May 2009, he was sworn in as minister of state for external affairs, in charge of Africa, Latin America, and the Gulf, including the Hajj pilgrimage, and the consular, passports, and visas services of the ministry. As minister of state for external affairs, he re-established long-dormant diplomatic relationships with African nations, where his fluency in French made him popular with Francophone countries and their heads of state.
Tharoor was a pioneer in using social media as an instrument of political interaction. He was India's most-followed politician on Twitter until 2013, when he was overtaken by future prime minister Narendra Modi. Some of his Twitter posts have proved controversial in the past and were highlighted negatively by the opposition and press.
Tharoor was also the first Indian minister to visit Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake. He reformed the arrangements relating to the conduct of the Hajj pilgrimage. He initiated new policy-planning activities on the Indian Ocean and represented India at various global events during his 11-month tenure as minister. In April 2010, Tharoor resigned from the position as Minister of State for External Affairs following allegations that he had misused his office to get shares in an Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket franchise. He denied the charges and, during his resignation speech in Parliament, called for a full inquiry. In a 2014 rejoinder he defended his position: "I was never involved in a scam of any sort in the IPL- I was brought down because...[I had] antagonised some powerful political cricketing interests" and added that he had "cooperated extensively with the detailed investigation conducted by the Enforcement Directorate into the entire issue", and no wrongdoing had been found.
Between 2010 and 2012, Tharoor remained active in Parliament and was member-convenor of the Parliamentary Forum on Disaster Management, a member of the Standing Committee on External Affairs, of the Consultative Committee of Defence, the Public Accounts Committee, and the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Telecoms. He participated in several important debates of the 15th Lok Sabha, including on the Lokpal Bill, the demand for grants of the Ministry of External Affairs and of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the black money debate, and so on. In the special debate on the 60th anniversary of the Indian Parliament, Tharoor was one of four members of the Congress Party, including party President Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee, to be invited to address the Lok Sabha.
In 2012, Tharoor was re-inducted into the Union Council of Ministers by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the portfolio of minister of state for Human Resource Development. In this role, he took special interest in the problems and challenges of adult education, distance education and enhancing high-quality research by academic institutions. He was responsible for the ministry's written answers to Parliament's questions and responded to oral questions on education during the Lok Sabha's Question Hour. He addressed forums and conferences on education, explained a vision of India's educational challenges in the context of the country's demographic opportunities, and stressed that education was not only a socioeconomic issue, but also a national security issue.
As Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor became the first elected representative in India to issue annual reports on his work as MP, including furnishing accounts of his MPLADS expenditure. In 2012, he published a half-term report followed in 2014 by a full-term report.
In opposition (2014–present)