With reshuffle, will UPA find its rhythm?

Like its belated new surge of economic reforms, the reshuffle of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s council of ministers is a “big bang” affair. The question, however, is whether the changes would produce the desired result, which would depend not on the shake-up of the old cast but on its performance.

The country will pass its judgment on this some 17 months later. For the present it would suffice to say that the Congress-dominated government now looks in better shape than until Sunday. Dr Singh is right to claim that the rejig is a combination of both youth and experience. If so, why didn’t he marshal this team in May 2009 rather than procrastinate for three years? His assertion that this would “hopefully” be the last reshuffle of the team is also welcome.
So is the promotion of a bevy of young ministers such as Jyotiraditya Scindia or Sachin Pilot who did not have enough work so far. They have either been given independent charge of crucial portfolios such as power and corporate affairs or, as in the case of M.M. Pallam Raju and Ajay Maken, conferred the Cabinet status they certainly deserve. Among the new entrants, Manish Tewari brings to the information and broadcasting ministry well-honed skills for the job. Ashwani Kumar’s talent would be better utilised at law and justice than at planning.
Throwing politeness to the winds let me add that foreign minister S.M. Krishna’s exit has not come a day too soon. On more occasions than one could keep count of he has been an embarrassment to the country internationally, being unable even to read coherently a brief given to him by his officials. The best that can be said in his favour is that he was happy to leave the running of foreign policy to the Prime Minister and the PMO.
Having said this one has to turn one’s gaze to what can only be called the seamy side of the reshuffle. The most important single change obviously is Salman Khurshid’s promotion from the ministry of law and justice to the external affairs ministry, one of the top four. Here, alas, we run into a painful paradox. Mr Khurshid is certainly qualified to preside over the MEA. A highly educated and articulate man, he gave an excellent account of himself as minister of state for external affairs in the past.
The tragedy, however, is that very recently he and his wife got embroiled in a controversy arising from allegations of wrongdoing by a trust with which both are associated. And then at a press conference he held to “refute” the allegations, he gave a display of temper that ill behoves the country’s chief diplomat. His critics’ demand for his immediate resignation was, of course, unacceptable but then so is his conspicuous elevation without a transparent and credible disposing of the murky controversy.
Far more improper, indeed shameful, is the abrupt removal of petroleum minister Jaipal Reddy to what, in the words of a leading newspaper, is the Congress-led government’s “punishment posting”. The reason for this unreasonable action had made the front page a day before the event. One of the Ambani brothers was displeased with the minister for resisting the tycoon’s demand for a reduction in the production of natural gas and pushing up its price, depriving the exchequer of roughly `45,000 crore. The official explanation for this is that the PM wants the economic and infrastructure ministries to be headed only by those who are “in tune with” his policy on reforms. But this would not wash. The country has long witnessed the Ambani clout with successive governments. So much so that eminent analysts have said that the government has “abandoned self-reliance for the sake of Reliance”.
Moreover, it is a small mercy that Dr Singh asked Subodh Kant Sahai to put in his papers for having canvassed for coal blocks for his brother. But Sriprakash Jaiswal, with even more serious allegations against him, sits pretty at the coal ministry. Understandably, the Congress also chose to give Mamata Banerjee a taste of the medicine she had administered it all too often. So it appointed three most trenchant Mamata-baiters as ministers from West Bengal. It turns out that one of them, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, is under trial, in a number of cases, on very serious charges, some of them heinous. One can be sure the government would come forward with the standard defence: “Innocent until proved guilty.”
Against this backdrop it is impossible to blame those who have concluded that the Congress has decided to treat the Arvind Kejriwals and other crusaders against corruption as “irrelevant” and to stonewall all the charges emanating from them. Some of them have called this “brazening it all out”. Mr Kejriwal’s frontal attack on Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law, Robert Vadra, appears to have strengthened this determination.
What appears to have helped the Congress in this respect is that the BJP, equally vulnerable, has tied itself into knots. If the entire Congress phalanx, from senior ministers to non-entities, had defended Mr Vadra and his real estate dealings, the BJP phalanx is equally vehemently defending the dubious deals of its heavyweight president Nitin Gadkari. Dishonours are even.
The reshuffle has a lot to do also with the 2014 elections, as should be evident from the bonanza of ministerial posts to Andhra Pradesh where the Congress leadership has at last read the writing on the wall. Dinsha Patel has been made a Cabinet minister because he is a Congressman with a hold on his constituents in Gujarat. But this has to be discussed separately in some detail.
The last point to be made is that Rahul Gandhi’s stamp on the reshuffle is faint compared with that of his mother and, to a lesser extent, Dr Singh’s. It is also becoming more and more clear that Mr Gandhi wouldn’t join a Cabinet headed by someone else.