Modi's Cabinet reshuffle exposes the terrible lack of talent in BJP
The message sent out by the first Cabinet reshuffle is loud and clear: Narendra Modi alone matters in the Modi government. The rest are all pawns in a game of chess that Modi alone has the power to play.
Prime ministers are supposed to be the first among equals. But our prime ministers - Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Modi - who have had absolute majority in the Lok Sabha have mostly been above that norm.
So Modi with a baton in his hands directs his ministers in a game of musical chairs.
Arun Jaitley sheds some weight and Ravi Shankar Prasad adds some. A wing clipped here, and a wing clipped there, a grace mark here and a loyalty bonus there.
In this game of musical chairs, the information and broadcasting portfolio, which was with Prakash Javadekar when Modi took over, was given to Jaitley and now has been taken away from him? Prasad had law and justice, which was allotted to Sadananda Gowda and now has been given back to Prasad.
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| Murli Manohar Joshi would have been a better choice as HRD minister. |
And does anyone know why Venkaiah Naidu has lost the parliamentary affairs portfolio? It was embarrassing for a senior minister like Naidu to say Modi is like "god". But was Modi embarrassed too? Rumours abound.
Taking human resource development out of the feisty Smriti Irani's hands was the only substantive change in the reshuffle.
Modi failed there too. Replacing Irani with Javadekar is like falling from a hot pan into the fire.
One can't cease to be appalled by the Modi's obduracy. Does he listen to the voices of the people? Or the only voice he hears is that of his Twitter followers?
For his own good and the good of the government, Modi should have brought in a heavyweight - someone with experience in education or a veteran politician with vision, even if only a tinted one, to deliver in what is arguably the most important ministry.
Murli Manohar Joshi, a PhD in physics and a professor who headed the HRD portfolio during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, was one such person. He combined scholarship and experience as a politician. A true disciple of the RSS, Joshi carried out a lot of mumbo jumbo in the name of science and research but did have the persona to suit the ministry.
One understands that the Sangh Parivar lacks talent. When Modi goes talent-hunting, he finds the likes of Ram Bahadur Rai and installs him as a culture czar in the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA), finds Gajendra Chauhan and puts him at the head of the FTII, and has people with questionable academic credentials leading institutions of various academic and research value.
But all that someone in the Modi government needed to do was to google the list of former education and HRD ministers to understand the importance of the ministry. From the likes of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, KL Srimali, Humayun Kabir and S Nurul Hasan as education ministers, to PV Narasimha Rao and MM Joshi as HRD ministers, the list tells a story one can't miss.
Javadekar has no rough edges; he is no match for Irani's flamboyance. Some relief for educationists but overall a poor choice.
The new minister will be subtler in carrying out the RSS agenda than his predecessor. That's about all.
If the prime minister has lived up to his ill-repute in juggling around his mediocre favourites with no clear and defined focus, has he also been true to his notoriety for being revengeful and vindictive?
Has Jayant Sinha paid the price for his outspoken and Modi-baiter father Yashwant Sinha's sins?
The senior Sinha has lost no opportunity to slam Modi in the last two years. But the question as to why Jayant was inducted into the ministry if Modi had problems with his father makes the reading of revenge in Modi's action a bit far-fetched.
There is the conflict of interest theory too. Jayant Sinha's spouse Punita Kumari Sinha is a reputed investment banker and financial wizard. She too has courted controversies in the past. Her associations with top notch corporate and financial institutions could be a problem for her spouse's presence in the finance ministry.
Perhaps Modi wanted a smart BJP man to shadow Ashok Gajapathi Raju, the civil aviation minister from the ally TDP, for the implementation of the new aviation policy, and this was possibly the reason Jayant Sinha was shifted to the ministry of civil aviation as minister of state.
It's the worst time for the Delhi media and it's the best time for them too.
Modi's government is the most closed and opaque dispensation in a long time. True to the lessons learnt from the RSS, the BJP government lets rumours get passed off as "information". When all major channels of information are controlled by RSS-influenced forces, credible information becomes a casualty.
The one positive from the Cabinet reshuffle has been the induction of MJ Akbar as minister of state for external affairs. He can be a valuable asset to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, especially in handling west Asian and Muslim countries. But Akbar has to conduct as low-profile diplomacy as Swaraj in pushing India's interest in the Arab and Islamic countries to be an asset.
Besides massaging Modi's ego, the message the Cabinet rejig gives is that the BJP stable lacks talent to deliver.