A series of botched-up exams have once again put the spotlight on the Narendra Modi government’s failure to manage and regulate India’s higher education system. For weeks, protestors have been demanding the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.
On social media, many have pointed out that until recently Pradhan’s daughter Naimisha was enrolled in an American university. As one user argued: “While political leaders can afford to send their children abroad for quality education, millions of Indian students are left battling a system plagued by paper leaks, recruitment scams, delayed results, and lack of accountability.”
But Pradhan’s daughter is not the only one. Scroll analysed publicly available information about the children of India’s cabinet rank ministers. Of the 21 children aged between 18 and 35 for whom information was available, 15 have a foreign degree or are currently studying in foreign universities, and one studied in India, while the educational background of five is not known. The age group was chosen since those within it are most likely to have been in college and university since 2014, after the Narendra Modi government came to power.
For instance, Arjun Jaishankar, the youngest child of S Jaishankar, the minister of external affairs, graduated in 2021, with a bachelor of arts degree from New York University. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s daughter Vangmayi Parakala obtained a master of arts degree from Medill School in Illinois’s Northwestern University.
Both the children of commerce minister Piyush Goyal completed their undergraduate and post graduate degrees abroad. His son, Dhruv Goyal, completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Harvard University and his daughter, Radhika Goyal, completed both her degrees from Oxford, and then earned a PhD from the University of San Diego.
Similarly, railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s two children, Tanya and Rahul, have both studied in the United Kingdom.
“The fact that ministers send their children abroad shows the apathy that they have for the education system here,” said Niranjanaradhya VP, an education activist from Karnataka. “Those who can afford it will send their children abroad, but what are we doing to improve the system here? That’s a question that we need an answer to right now.”
More Indian students abroad
The choice of many ministers’ children to study abroad is in keeping with a larger trend in higher education in India. Even as chaos has unfolded around India’s entrance exams in recent years, an increasing number of students have enrolled to study at foreign universities.
This number has risen more or less steadily over the past few decades. In 2001, 2.2 million students left India to study abroad. By 2011, this number stood at 4 million, and by 2022, it had reached 6.9 million.
“People have lost trust in the exam system and the job market. Paper leaks every year, why will anyone have trust?” said Anil Kumar Roy, an education activist based in Bihar. “This is what is pushing so many students to go abroad to study.”
Concurrently, the number of international students choosing to study in India has plateaued or fallen in recent years. In 2000-’01, around 6,900 international students travelled to India to study. By 2013-’14, this number had risen to 39,517. Through those years, the number of international students travelling to India to study grew steadily, nearly doubling in some years.
Since 2014, however, the annual growth in this number has never crossed 10%.
Roy said that institutions were struggling without funds. “Funds are being cut for libraries, laboratories and research, why would students want to study here?” he said. “For all the talk of being a vishwaguru, the country is not willing to fund science and research.”
Publicly available information
Scroll looked through a range of public sources to identify the number, age, and educational background of the children of India’s 30 cabinet ministers. These included government websites, social media accounts, personal websites, corporate websites, LinkedIn pages and news reports.
Three ministers – Manohar Lal Khattar, Sarbananda Sonowal and Chirag Paswan – are unmarried and do not have children. Some ministers have young children. Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, for instance, has two children below the age of six. Kiren Rijiju also has two children who are still in school.
In the case of nine ministers, like Rajiv Rajan Singh, minister of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying; Jual Oram, minister of tribal affairs; and Mansukh Mandavi, minister of labour and employment, there was little or no information available online about their children’s ages, educational qualifications or places of study.
Among the other ministers whose children aged 35 or less have studied abroad are the minister of agriculture and farmers welfare, Shivraj Singh Chouhan. His elder son, Kartikeya Chouhan, graduated in 2023 with a masters of law from the University of Pennsylvania. His younger son, Kunal Chouhan, obtained an undergraduate degree at New York University in 2016.
JP Nadda, the minister for health and family welfare, has a son, Harish Nadda, who graduated from the University of London in 2019 with a masters in law.
The children of Jyotiraditya Scindia, minister of communication, also studied abroad. His daughter, Ananya Raje, graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2024 and his son, Mahanaaryaman Scindia, graduated from Yale in 2019.
Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju’s eldest son is currently pursuing a bachelor of arts in a university in the United Kingdom. Suhasini Shekhawat, daughter of the tourism minister, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, obtained a diploma in advanced leadership from Oxford. The environment and forest minister Bhupender Yadav’s daughter obtained a degree from Parsons College in 2021.
Reflecting on this trend, Roy said, “Ministers only send their children abroad because they don’t trust the system themselves.”
Scroll emailed the ministers whose children have studied abroad, asking them about this criticism. This report will be updated if there is a response.
