The Hindu Business Line : Full Government at last

It has taken longer than usual but, finally, India has a full Government in place with 78 ministers, including the 19 sworn in on May 23. The upward age bias in the Cabinet — the average age of the first batch was 65 — has been corrected to some extent, by two means. First, there are now several younger Cabinet ministers, who help bring the average age down to about 60. Second, many of the younger Ministers of State have been given independent charge. This will leave them free to get on with their jobs without having to constantly look over their shoulders. Also, many of those who have been selected for ministerial berths are technocrats in their ways of thinking. A large subset of them, such as Mr Sachin Pilot, Mr Jyotiraditya Scindia and Mr Jitin Prasada, also belongs to budding dynasties. The latter two were already ministers in the previous government. In that sense, the Prime Minister deserves full credit for having created the pool from which the next bunch of Cabinet ministers can be recruited.

The allocation of the portfolios can be interpreted in many ways. For example, moving Mr Kamal Nath from Commerce to Surface Transport and thus taking the portfolio away from the DMK is, to say the least, interesting. Putting Mr Jairam Ramesh in Environment suggests that the Government wants someone dynamic in charge there because of the international ramifications of climate change. Mr Anand Sharma in Commerce is a clear surprise. But he is an old loyalist of the Congress royalty. However, speculating about the reasons behind the allocations is pointless. One must hope that the right people have been chosen for the right jobs because that is three quarters of the battle won.

The other quarter is no less important, however. This comprises proper empowerment. An independent charge is only a third of it. The other two-thirds consist of the minister’s ability to push through legislative changes, to coordinate inter-ministerial issues, and to effect those little administrative and operational changes that make a large difference. The first requires Parliament’s cooperation and the second requires the department’s. Both can test a minister’s abilities to the utmost, with sometimes the latter being the harder nut to crack because bureaucrats can be very rigid. Nor should the new ministers waste time ordering fresh studies to be conducted so that they can claim some pointless credit. There are usually enough reports available and, like Mr Lalu Yadav, if they can pick and choose from these, a lot of valuable time will be saved. The message that the Prime Minister has to drill home is that a lot of time was wasted because of the Left-contrived logjam in the last five years. That lost time now has to be made up.

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