Career
Yashwant Sinha held many important posts in the Indian Administrative Service. In a career that extended to around twenty-four years he gained quite a lot of experience. Sinha served as a Sub-Divisional Magistrate and Magistrate for four years. He worked as Under Secretary and Deputy Secretary in the Finance Department of Bihar Government for two years after which he held the post of Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India. From 1971 to 1973, he served as The First Secretary at the Indian Embassy in Bonn in Germany. He also worked as the Consul General of India from 1973 - 1974 in Frankfurt. Having worked in this field for seven years, he gained expertise in matters related to foreign trade and India's relationship with the European Economic Community. Subsequently, he worked in the Department of Industrial Infrastructure, Government of Bihar and in the Ministry of Industry, Government of India. Here, he dealt with foreign industrial collaborations, technology imports and industrial approvals. He also served as the Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Surface Transport, Government of India from 1980 to 1984, where he dealt with ports and shipping and road transport.Jay Prakash Narayan's socialist movement of the mid seventies had a great influence on Yashwant Sinha. Though he toyed with the idea of joining active politics, financial instability and bureaucratic prudence made him continue in the service for another ten years. In 1984, Yashwant Sinha resigned from the Indian Administrative Service and joined active politics as a member of the Janatha party. In 1986, he became the All-India General Secretary of the party and was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1988. In 1989, after the formation of the Janatha Dal, he became the General Secretary of the party. He served as the Finance Minister from 1990 to 1991 in Chandrasekhar's cabinet. In 1996, he became the national spokesperson of the Bharathiya Janatha Party. He served as the Finance Minister from March 1998 to May 2002 and as Foreign Minister till 2004 in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministry. While serving as the Finance Minister, he was criticized for rolling back some of the major initiatives and policies of the government. This lead a decline in his ascent, in the Lok Sabha elections which were held in 2004, Yashwant Sinha was defeated from Hazaribagh (now in Jharkhand) constituency in Bihar. Even though he entered the parliament in 2005, he resigned from the post of BJP Vice-President in 2009.