Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman is India's second female defence minister and the second woman finance minister after Indira Gandhi, and the first full-time woman minister to hold each of those portfolios. Sitharaman featured in the Forbes 2022 list of World's 100 most powerful women for the fifth time in a row and Fortune named her the most powerful woman in India. Having worked briefly with BBC at London Sitharaman has been at the forefront of several significant economic reforms. In Feb 2024 she presented the Union budget for the record 6th time to match the previous same number by Morarji Desai.