2010 Wharton MBA graduate Ashwini Vaishnaw has been appointed as the new Electronics and Information Technology minister of India. (Photo by Deepak00406 | CC BY-SA 4.0)
Ashwini Vaishnaw, a Wharton MBA graduate, has been appointed as the new Electronics and Information Technology minister of India, the Indian government announced on Tuesday.
The 2010 graduate from Wharton’s two-year MBA program and graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, a premier public technical university in India, has taken on the roles of Minister of Railways, Communications, and Electronics and Information Technology, Bloomberg reported.
The appointment comes during an ongoing push for greater control over major technology companies, such as Twitter and WhatsApp, by the Indian government, news outlets wrote. The former Electronics and Information Technology minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, had stepped down during the political struggle with the technology giants.
Vaishnaw has publicly stated that he will continue the effort for stricter compliance with the new information technology rules released in February. Under these new guidelines, social media companies will have to adhere to a defined code of ethics and create a "mechanism for redressal and timely resolution of [a user's] grievance," the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses reported.
The new minister reportedly said that “the law of the land should be abided by everyone," according to Yahoo News.
Vaishnaw has spent time in both the public and private sector, beginning his career in the Indian Administrative Service and later working for both General Electric and Siemens after completing his degree at Wharton, according to Bloomberg.
The current minister’s political career has included roles as a Deputy Secretary in the Prime Minister’s office from 2003 to 2004 and as a member of the upper house of the Parliament of India, the Rajya Sabha, beginning in 2019.
Vaishnaw took to Twitter on July 7 to acknowledge the nomination, expressing gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “the opportunity to serve the nation as Union Minister” and pledging to "work relentlessly to realise his vision.”
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