The Reshuffle Message from Modi: Performance Pays

When asked, during his interaction with select newspapers on Monday, about divisive politics being practiced by political parties and anti-Muslim comments from within his party and the larger Sangh Parivar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi waxed eloquent on the former, but waffled on the latter.

The cabinet expansion that he carried out on Tuesday, however, carried a message. Ram Shankar Katheria, who made some incendiary remarks in Uttar Pradesh some months ago, was dropped. And Yogi Adityanath did not find a place in the council of ministers, though there was a lot of speculation that he would. (Of course, there is no denying that much of these speculations are ill-informed and even motivated.)

There is another message coming out from the cabinet expansion and reshuffle – perform or perish (or get punished) and stay out of controversies.

Shifting Smriti Irani to the textiles ministry could be Modi’s style of reprimand – the minister was known more for unseemly quarrels and controversies than any lasting contribution to education. (There is, however, another view that Irani has been given textiles in the light of the Uttar Pradesh elections, but one will have to wait and see how the ministry functions.)

Sadanand Gowda, who was quite underwhelming in the law ministry, has got shunted out to the ministry of statistics and programme implementation. Though one wonders why a person who under-performed in two successive ministries (he had been shifted out of railways in 2014) continues to be in the cabinet at all.

Prakash Javdekar’s promotion to cabinet rank and being given charge of the human resource development ministry is a double pat on the back. After the controversy-ridden tenure of Irani, his will be a voice of maturity, stability and reason. Media reports say his successor, Anil Madhav Dave, is an environmentalist and this shows Modi sees this ministry as a crucial one and has chosen with care.

Piyush Goyal, among the best performing ministers in Team Modi, not getting cabinet rank and continuing as minister of state was a bit of a disappointment. But the fact that he has been given additional charge of the mines ministry (again as independent charge) is clearly an acknowledgement of his capabilities. Mining auctions are due and Goyal’s stellar stewardship of the coal auctions must have played a role in this decision.

If performance was the decisive factor, the shifting of Jayant Sinha to civil aviation as minister of state is extremely puzzling. Sinha is hardly an under-performer – he was among the most dynamic of ministers of state for finance in recent memory. He played a crucial role in financial sector policies and in the bankruptcy code. If he was to be shifted out of the finance ministry, he should have got at least independent charge as minister of state. Or could this shift be a sign of some significant policy change in civil aviation which he is likely to helm? We will have to wait and see.

The dynamics behind the decision to divest Arun Jaitley of the information and broadcasting portfolio (which now goes to M. Venkaiah Naidu as additional charge along with urban development) are not known. There will be a lot of speculation about this but this is a welcome development. The finance ministry needs a minister whose attention is not diverted to other responsibilities. With Sinha gone, Jaitley will need to focus his energies on economic management alone – he’s got two ministers of state to help him.

There are other under-performing ministers in important ministries. Why have they been left untouched will remain unanswered. One would have wished that, in keeping with his minimum government mantra, Modi had limited the size of his council of ministers. Minimum government is entirely not about numbers, but a jumbo cabinet like this one is not the right message to send out. Such carping aside, Modi’s late evening performance-based reshuffle of portfolios on Tuesday was more heartening than the politics-based expansion earlier in the day.