Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third cabinet reshuffle in three years is more about politics than performance. Although it was pitched as an exercise based on 4 Ps – passion, proficiency, professional and political acumen – to choose a team that would deliver on his vision of a “new India’’, political considerations have dominated, as they always do in every rejig.
Nirmala ‘Safe Bet’ Sitharaman
The elevation of Nirmala Sitharaman as defence minister is the single biggest pointer to the manner in which the BJP’s internal political dynamics have played out this time. She is efficient and capable but the decision to give her a double promotion and catapult her into the league of the Big Five, comprising the all important cabinet committee on security, has little to do with her record as minister of state for commerce.
She now stands as an equal to the heavyweights: home minister Rajnath Singh, finance minister Arun Jaitley and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj who are members of the CCS headed by the PM.
This is a huge jump for someone who joined the BJP only in 2006 and became a Member of Parliament in 2014 after being appointed as a minister in the Modi government.
Sitharaman’s amazing leap upwards seems to be the consequence of intensive lobbying by the heavyweights who want to keep the CCS a closed club, symbolic of their dominance in the current establishment.
An independent and experienced “outsider’’ like Suresh Prabhu, formerly of the Shiv Sena who was being considered for the portfolio, would have upset equations which Sitharaman will not do because of her comparatively junior status and indebtedness to seniors who have mentored her through her quick rise.
It is worth recalling here that two days before the reshuffle, senior ministers Jaitley, Sushma and Nitin Gadkari (who enjoys a special status in the government because of his closeness to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat) had met at Rajnath’s residence.
According to reports, the main item on the agenda was to create a consensus among themselves on a name for the new defence minister who would be the fifth member of the CCS. BJP circles see this meeting as a pressure tactic with a strong message to the PM to keep the equilibrium at the top undisturbed.
Snub to Under-Performers
Modi has tried to shape the narrative of the reshuffle as an emphasis on performance and delivery with the induction of four former bureaucrats: ex home secretary R K Singh, ex Mumbai police commissioner Satya Pal Singh, former DDA Commissioner K Alphons and retired diplomat Hardeep Puri.
The commentary around the exercise has focused on his novel experiment with lateral entries from the world of bureaucracy as a signal to politicians that he can do without them if they don’t deliver.
But the political messages are too strong to ignore. Take for example the snub to JD(U), whose chief, Nitish Kumar – a recent NDA entrant, was hoping for two ministerial berths. Not only did Modi pin him down by not offering a single berth, but also delivered a double snub by inducting two BJP MPs from Bihar – R K Singh and Ashwini Chaubey. It’s a clear message to Nitish that the BJP intends to power ahead on its own in the state and build its own base and profile.
Nitish can like it or lump it.
Singh’s induction, therefore, is more of a political message to Nitish than a desire to use his considerable administrative expertise. And it shows in the choice of portfolio that he has been given. He is the new power minister although his main experience as a bureaucrat has been in the home ministry.
Little Attention to Professional Backgrounds
Similarly, Alphons seems to have been picked for his connections to the Church. He is the first and only Christian member of Modi’s cabinet and he has played a key role as an interlocutor between the Church and the BJP, both in Kerala and in Goa.
The BJP is hoping to make inroads into Kerala as part of its bid to enlarge its national footprint beyond the cow belt.
Christians are an important community in the state. Through Alphons, Modi is signalling the Church to look at the BJP more favourably.
Interestingly, Alphons has been made tourism minister although as a former DDA commissioner – when he was nicknamed Demolition Man for trying to clear unauthorized constructions in Delhi – he probably would have been more useful as a housing minister pushing the PM’s showcase ‘housing for all’ scheme.
It is evident from the choice of portfolios to the two other retired bureaucrats, Puri and Satya Pal Singh, that little attention has been paid to their professional backgrounds.
Bureaucrats are known as jack of all trades and master of none. But Puri, for instance, has vast experience in WTO negotiations while Singh is a former police officer who headed one of the most important and professional forces in the country, and Puri is minister for housing while Singh has been allotted the HRD ministry and water resources.
Caste a Factor
Caste is another factor that seems to have been factored into Modi and Amit Shah’s decisions. There are three new Brahmin faces in the ministry: S P Shukla – an arch rival of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Ashwini Choubey and Ananthkumar Hegde. This is an SOP to the BJP’s Brahmin voters who have been feeling increasingly restless as Shah refashioned the party into a votary for the OBCs and Dalits.
But there is an additional political agenda.
Hegde hails from the communally sensitive constituency of Uttara Kannada in Karnataka. He is a staunch RSS follower and is currently facing criminal charges for hate speeches and assaulting a doctor who he claimed did not treat his mother when she sustained a fracture. The BJP clearly sees him as a valuable asset in next year’s assembly elections in Karnataka where communal polarization is on the upswing.
Shukla’s induction, as minister of state for finance, is an attempt to balance Yogi Adityanath’s Thakur politics in UP which is wreaking havoc in the BJP’s Brahmin vote base.
It is virtually impossible to insulate governance from politics in our parliamentary party system. Modi is known to favour a presidential system in which the head of government functions like a CEO and can pick and choose his team from outside the political milieu. But as long as the current system remains, Modi has to bow to political compulsions, as the present reshuffle has affirmed yet again.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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