What Modi Got Wrong And Right With Cabinet Reshuffle

The road to 2019 is still a work in progress. Allies are yet to be brought on board and while the arithmetic immensely favours the BJP, the chemistry is still brewing.

With the announcement of the portfolios for the new and elevated ministers, the Prime Minister has sent the message that his focus is on delivery and that he means business. With Nirmala Sitharaman as new Defence Minister - it is the first time that India has a full-fledged woman Defence Minister (Indira Gandhi was Minister of State for Defence), the Prime Minister has relieved Arun Jaitley of the additional charge. Alphons as the new Tourism Minister will be able to give a fresh impetus to the industry which is a priority for job creation and foreign exchange. Hardeep Puri is the new Minister for Urban Development and Suresh Prabhu gets the Commerce and Industry portfolio vacated by Nirmala Sitharaman. Another huge change is Piyush Goyal as the new Railway Minister while Dharmendra Pradhan continues with the same portfolio. Overall, the Prime Minister has made a compact, credible team. But essentially, the face of the government remains close to what he started off with in 2014.

One thing is clear: this is not the last change before the general election. Today's changes have in some way added more sheen to the cabinet, infused more administrative talent, widened the representative nature of ministers, covered more regions. The existing vacancies have been filled, but the inspirational ingredient is somehow missing.

The new additions, specially from Bihar, Kerala and Karnataka, are politically meaningful. In Alphons Kannanthanam, the Kerala and Christian community have their first representation in the cabinet. Ananthkumar Hegde is a very popular eight-time MP from Karnataka and his induction will go a long way in consolidating the BJP's position in the state as it heads for elections. Ashwini Kumar Choubey is a senior leader from Bihar and he immensely deserved the position. A former top officer each from the IAS, IPS and IFS as ministers will help manage the bureaucracy better. But the whole exercise has not set the Ganga on fire.

It is rare that a cabinet becomes the Prime Minister's or the nation's dream team. It is the reflection of the political template, coalition compulsions and matrix of realpolitik that shape a cabinet. Narendra Modi is exceptionally lucky in all these respects because of the mandate he received and the popularity he still sustains. The government has great performers in Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Smriti Irani, Piyush Goyal, Nirmala Sitharaman and Dharmendra Pradhan. Modi has retained all of them. This team essentially is the face of the Modi government. There are areas of under-performance or ministers who are light weight-lifters. The shuffle has clearly exposed all that. Modi won 2014 because chemistry was on his side. But the next election will largely be fought on arithmetic rather than chemistry.

A cabinet reshuffle when there are only 20 months to go for the general election is significant in many ways. Moreover, there are nine crucial states set to vote before the 2019 election, including Gujarat, Himachal, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. A cabinet reshuffle is often done to accommodate different interest groups in the ruling coalition and give representation to all constituents - but the JDU and Sena were given no space today; another reshuffle is expected to handle the needs of allies. A reshuffle also aims at refurbishing the image of the government now in power for over three years. In the process, performance is rewarded and under-performers are either removed or demoted. Giving weight to politically sensitive states is natural. The Prime Minister has to keep regional balances in mind along with caste and gender balance. Then there is the obvious objective of filling  vacancies, delays in which were causing an administrative logjam. Most senior ministers are over-burdened with holding additional charges.

The idea of creating omnibus ministries is older than the liberalization era. It was initially mooted by Rajiv Gandhi in the 80s when he merged all social welfare ministries under the banner of Human Resources Development Ministry. But it did not work. Atal Bihari Vajpayee as Prime Minister in 1999 separated Culture, Women and Child, Minority welfare and Youth and Sports departments from the HRD and created new ministries as the Rajiv Gandhi model proved utterly unwieldy. At one point, as HRD minister, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi had over a dozen departments and as many secretaries to deal with. Experience has shown that ministers are not able to physically monitor so many departments and often, decision-making is delayed as a consequence. It is not clear if the failure to fill vacancies in various commissions and committees where either positions are vacant or are still manned by UPA appointees is because ministers are otherwise overworked.

In the election year, there will be more focus on delivery. The government has made scores of announcements to bring a transformative change in the way people live and work. The emphasis was on creating a more welfare-ist social architecture by widening the tax net and streamlining entitlements for the poor. However, not all schemes have achieved the expected level of success. The message is clear in the ministerial rejig. Prestigious projects of the government like job creation, the Ganga-cleaning plan, Mudra Yojana, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan are being presented as in Mission Mode, but their success is limited. In their success depends the 2019 poll outcome. But there are areas like electricity for all, free cooking gas connections for BPL families and financial inclusion through Jan Dhan Yojana which are rated as big success stories. The ministers in charge of these departments are clearly on the ascend.

From the beginning, Modi has put the onus of winning elections on the shoulders of his ministerial team. That is why, in every state election, the management was entrusted to couple of senior ministers. This has its own logic and advantages. The command line is clear. It is the reason why the present reshuffle is being seen as the team that will lead the party in 2019.

Even after the present round, many regions are either unrepresented or under represented. This is a lacuna Modi has to consider on his road to his second innings. The party may not be strong in these areas. But as a growing entity, there is good hope of the party gaining strength.

The mesmeric touch is missing here. It seems the political canvass has not been spread wide enough to envelope larger array of talent. 

(Dr R. Balashankar is Member, BJP Central Committee on Training, and Committee on Publications and former Convener BJP National Intellectual Cell and former Editor Organiser.)

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