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HomeOpinionCabinet reshuffle is not about governance, but elections and party consolidation

Cabinet reshuffle is not about governance, but elections and party consolidation

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It is not really the performance but caste and electoral consolidation that drives this cabinet reshuffle.

There is a desperation for middle range news today. The Big News cannot be written about, worldwide. One can talk of Trump’s antics but not of America as the Rogue Nation. One can talk of cabinet reshuffles, but the disaster called demonetization is drowned in indifference. In fact, we create an artificial hysteria, we create events where there is hardly any change. Cabinet reshuffles are met with the excitement of exam results and forgotten as quickly.

In fact, to see it as an exam process, gives our first entry. Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman have been promoted for good performance. Nirmal Sitharaman, as Defence Minister is the major news take away. Yet to think the gendering of defence alters our perspective on defence is hasty.

Sitharaman is an ambitious, party loyalist. She has been brought in as Defence Minister to consolidate defence deals. Defence, in fact, become an extension of the commerce department, a department of deals than any search for peace. It is an easy confusion of gender for feminism.

Sitharaman is the first woman to be Defence Minister as Indira Gandhi only took defence with other portfolios. To expect her to have a theory of peace is far fetched. It makes one wonder whether representation alone changes the texture of thought and practice.

Piyush Goyal’s promotion to Railways sounds welcome. He has conveyed an impression of competence, but Railways as a Ministry is a graveyard of promising people. Here personal alone will not make a difference. What one is looking at is rethinking of policy and the cabinet reshuffling shows little indication of it.

As a game of musical chairs, one realizes the big losers have been three loudmouths. Vijay Goel has been dwarfed on what looks like grounds of ill health, but perhaps because he treated the Sports Ministry as an extension of Delhi politics, confusing spectacles for performance.

(Also read: With women, gen-next leaders and new entrants, the cabinet reshuffle eyes 2019 and beyond

Uma Bharati’s rhetoric added little to the logic of governance but she stays with water and sanitation as an acknowledgment of her roots in the party. Rudy is an intelligent man, but his hapless intelligence only added to the failure of Skill Development.

Actually, the message which one reads is not of governance, but of elections and party consolidation. It is Amit Shah rather than Modi, whose presence one senses as caste equations are being consolidated.

The appointments of Hegde, Shekawat, Pradhan are more with an eye on electoral consolidation that any design of fine tuning the ministries. It is not really the performance, but caste and electoral consolidation that drives this round of musical chairs. There is also a consolidation of a new generation of leadership in the party.

For the rest, Pradhan who has got skill development will have to use his skills to deliver Orissa, while Anant Kumar Hegde, who is in the news for assaulting doctors and supporting the Lingayat demand for a separate religious category, is being spruced up as a challenge to Congress’ Siddaramiah. Oddly party before country, elections before governance is the unstated message of this reshuffle.

The other aspect that commentators have emphasized is the lateral entry of bureaucrats like Alphons Kantharaman and Hardeep Puri as adding competence in the delivery of projects. It will be interesting to see how Puri’s stint as ambassador is going to add to his understanding of the much touted smart city projects or to his vision of future cities.

In fact, the only message that is clear is that of BJP’s message to its allies. None of them are represented in the new list, revealing an electoral confidence that does not bode well for the dignity of the latter.

Yet the one place where one wanted to see change of a structural kind was the agriculture ministry. In fact, it is as if the crises of agriculture, the farmer protests and the epidemic of agricultural suicides has left the BJP indifferent.

In fact, as one reads the first news reports, one cannot help smiling wryly as columnists desperately summon the right adjectives to match person to ministry. The shuffle is no doubt a big one but to think it would add to governance is far fetched. The cabinet shuffle is more a lottery of power than a search for responsibility and efficiency, but such is the way of most reshuffles.

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