New Delhi: Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi is expected to return to his slogan of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ in his second term as he and his Council of Ministers take oath of office Thursday.
The first step towards the implementation of this goal could be the merger of crucial ministries, say government officials, pointing out that this was also promised in both the 2014 and 2019 BJP manifestos.
“In order to ensure better implementation of policies and coordination, we will merge similar and complementary departments into sectoral ministries,” stated the 2019
manifesto.
“This will allow policymakers to frame holistic and comprehensive policies on the one hand and ensure smooth implementation on the other,” it said.
The 2014 manifesto, too, made a similar promise, but the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government could implement it only perfunctorily.
Only two ministries — urban development, and housing and urban poverty alleviation — were merged and brought under the housing and urban affairs ministry in 2017. This apart, senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari was made the in-charge of three key ministries — road transport and highways, shipping, and water resources.
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‘Merger of ministries helps to expedite work’
Senior bureaucrats in the government told ThePrint that the Modi government this time might go ahead with the agenda to merge key infrastructure ministries such as highways, shipping, railways and aviation, or health and pharmaceuticals.
“This will give the much-needed push to infrastructure by bringing cohesiveness in policy-making. All these sectors are linked to each other, but more often than not work in silos. A merger will expedite work,” a senior bureaucrat told ThePrint on condition of anonymity.
In the previous Modi regime, instead of merging ministries, the prime minister had constituted a body — Group of Infrastructure — headed by Gadkari in 2018. Besides Gadkari, the group consisted of ministers of railways, aviation, power, petroleum and telecom ministries, and its mandate was to meet to sort out issues of bottlenecks over sharing of infrastructure for utilities such as telecom cables, etc.
“But the Group of Infrastructure could do only that much and not more. This is the right time to implement bold decisions. If they can’t do it now with such an overwhelming mandate, they can’t do it ever,” said another bureaucrat.
There can be sectoral ministries such as infrastructure, energy, agriculture and food, headed by one minister each with a couple of minister of states, the bureaucrat added.
In 2014, apart from merging urban development and housing ministries, there were also talks to bring pharmaceuticals department and ministry of Ayush under the health ministry.
“But it could not be done because of red-tapism and some opposition from within the departments concerned,” said another bureaucrat.
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Wonderful. Two such exceptional mandates in a row is God’s grace and benediction for India. It should be made good use of. If India’s economy can begin to purr like a Rolls Royce engine, our time on the global stage would truly have come.