- By Ridam Sharma
- Tue, 30 Sep 2025 07:26 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Who Was The First Finance Minister of India? RK Shanmukham Chetty was the very first Finance Minister of independent India. He held office from 1947, at the time of India’s independence, to 1949, as per the official website for the Department of Revenue (DOR) of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. At the time of Chetty’s tenure, Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India. The first finance minister of independent India was born in 1892 in Coimbatore. He was a well-known Indian politician and economist who was known for his contribution to India's initial post-independence government.
RK Shanmukham Chetty was the man who gave the very first budget of independent India on November 26, 1947, covering a period of seven and a half months from August 15, 1947, to March 31, 1948, according to the Department of Economic Affairs website. The first interim budget of India was an important step in the country’s financial history.
Chetty was associated with the Indian nationalist Swaraj Party and Justice Party, a member of the Madras Legislative Council, a delegate to Indian Labour Conferences in Geneva, and also Diwan of Cochin from 1935 until 1941, implementing significant reforms in the process.
His tenure as the first financial minister of India laid the ground for India's economic policies in a time when the nation was making the transition from colonial domination to a sovereign democratic republic. The stories of the first finance minister offer an important understanding into the insights and characters that later shaped the world of contemporary India's politics and economics. All of which is a mirror to the difficulties the young nation faced in building itself one of the largest economies in the world.