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Writer's picturePoornima Shejal

An Inspirational Story on Rishi Sunak; Rise to Power

Updated: Jun 29



A household with immigrant roots gave birth to Rishi Sunak. His mother and father were born in Tanzania and Kenya, respectively; their grandparents had immigrated from Punjab, in northwest India, to East Africa. Sunak’s father was a general practitioner for the National Health Service. The oldest of his mother’s three children, Sunak, would eventually handle the accounting for his mother’s small pharmacy, which she managed and owned.


Early life and Education:

Sunak was able to enroll at Winchester College thanks to his parents’ sacrifices and savings for his education. Sunak served as the school’s newspaper editor in addition to being crowned “head boy” at Winchester. He worked as a server at an Indian restaurant in Southampton over the summer. Sunak went on to study philosophy, politics, and economics at Lincoln College in Oxford,. His education took him from elite preparatory schools to Oxford and then Stanford. Currently, his net worth — in large part due to the fortune of his wife, Akshata Murthy — is estimated to exceed that of King Charles and his Queen Consort. She is the daughter of billionaire Indian businessman and co-founder of Infosys, Narayana Murthy. 


Political and Social Acumen:

Sunak used the political knowledge to try to mitigate the harm done to the economy and people as a result of the government-imposed closures during the pandemic period. In order to preserve jobs and lessen the burden of the lockdown for both commoners and businesses, he established a comprehensive economic support program that allocated about £330 billion ($400 billion) in emergency funds for businesses and salary subsidies for workers. These rescue initiatives were well-liked, and Sunak, who exudes poise and polish, was welcomed to represent the government at daily press briefings where the prime minister appeared less composed.


Some observers thought Sunak’s “Eat Out to Help Out” program, which provided government-subsidized food and beverages to bars and restaurants, was a rousing success, but detractors said it was likely a major factor in the catastrophic rise in COVID-19 cases that occurred in the fall of 2020. Nevertheless, during the pandemic, a picture of Sunak emerged that was of a super-slick, social media savvy, perfectly groomed, handsome, but down-to-earth politician.


Hard Work paved a way: 

After steady streaming hard work and calculative strategical innovations Rishi Sunak, now who was appointed as prime minister at the age of 42, has surpassed his former boss David Cameron, who held the record at 43. Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is young and a person of colour. His appointment is historic because he is the first non-white leader of the country. Yet, at the same time, it is also true that by almost any other yardstick, the Sunak story of rise to power is not an underdog tale. 

In that sense, by virtue of his ethnicity and religion — as the child of Indian-origin parents, and as a practicing Hindu, a religious minority in the UK — he has breached a Conservative wall that deserved to come down in a multicultural society. Sunak’s challenge now will be to unite the party after its prolonged crisis of leadership and to display the political acumen that being the prime minister of a lively and deeply entrenched parliamentary democracy requires.

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