Shashi Tharoor came second in the 2006 race to lead the United Nations
Had one Security Council veto gone the other way, Shashi Tharoor might have become the second-youngest UN Secretary-General, aged 50. India nominated him in 2006, and he finished behind Ban Ki-moon in all four straw polls. The US ambassador later revealed his instructions: Washington did not want a strong Secretary-General.
Tharoor was born in London on 9 March 1956 to parents from Kerala and moved to India at two, attending schools in Yercaud, Bombay and Calcutta. After a history degree from St Stephen's College, Delhi, where he led the student union and founded a quiz club, he went to the Fletcher School at Tufts. He earned his doctorate at 22 and launched the school's international affairs journal as its first editor.
His UN career started in 1978 with the refugee agency in Geneva. From 1981 to 1984 he ran its Singapore office during the Vietnamese boat people crisis, directing rescues at sea and clearing a backlog of refugees awaiting new homes. He later worked on peacekeeping, became an aide to Kofi Annan in 1996 and in 2002 was confirmed as under-secretary-general for communications and public information. A senior American official told him the US wanted no more Kofis, and after the vote he left the UN in 2007.
Courted by three Indian parties, he chose Congress and won the Thiruvananthapuram seat in 2009 by 99,989 votes, going on to win the constituency a record four times. As a junior foreign minister handling Africa, Latin America and the Gulf, his fluent French helped revive ties with French-speaking African states, and he was the first Indian minister to visit Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. He resigned in April 2010 over allegations linked to shares in an IPL cricket franchise, which he denied, calling for a full inquiry. In 2012 he returned as a junior education minister.
An early adopter of social media, he was India's most-followed politician on Twitter until Narendra Modi overtook him in 2013. He also became the first elected representative in India to publish annual reports on his work as an MP.
Source: Shashi Tharoor
