Time For Modi To Wield The Broom: A Major Cabinet Reshuffle Is The Need Of Hour

Modi’s failure as PM has been not in his personal actions or his major policies, but in the shallowness of talent within the central ministry.

Perhaps for the first time since he became Prime Minister last May, Narendra Modi faces what looks like a full-blown internal crisis within the BJP, a crisis triggered by Arvind Kejriwal’s vociferous allegations of corruption in the Delhi District Cricket Association (DDCA) during Arun Jaitley’s watch.

The allegations would have died in due course, for too many politicians across many parties have a stake in cricket’s lucre to keep the muck at boiling point for too long, but some unexpected developments have queered the pitch. First, Kejriwal’s rant has set off a revolt within the BJP by Jaitley’s detractors, including Kirti Azad, an MP from Bihar. Another Bihar MP, Shatrughan Sinha, still smarting under the insult of being sidelined by the party during the Bihar polls, batted strongly for Azad. With another former BJP MP, Ram Jethmalani, vowing to defend Kejriwal and send “Jaitley to jail”, clearly the knives are out for the finance minister.

Less unexpectedly, the BJP’s Margdarshak Mandal of LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Shanta Kumar and Yashwant Sinha, which came out into the open following the BJP’s stunning defeat in Bihar, has also gone into a huddle, no doubt to fish in troubled waters.

Two things are worth noting here. One, Jaitley is being targeted, and his detractors encouraged even by the Congress, because he was seen as part of the power troika (along with Amit Shah) ruling the roost in the BJP, to the exclusion of all other power centres. So targeting him is like targeting Modi, which is what makes it difficult for Modi to distance himself from Jaitley.

However, less obvious, but equally important, Jaitley does not seem to be very highly thought of in party or other circles beyond the media. Some in the BJP obviously would be happy to stick a metaphorical knife into Jaitley when opportunity knocks. Right now it is knocking incessantly.

Given this backdrop, Modi clearly has to think twice about adopting “do-nothing” as a political strategy. He has to show he is master of the game, and this time action will achieve better results than sitting tight.

Modi’s failure as PM has been not in his personal actions or his major policies, but in the shallowness of talent within the central ministry.

Barring five or six competent ministers – Sushma Swaraj, Manohar Parrikar, Suresh Prabhu, Venkiah Naidu, and Piyush Goyal – and some unexpected performers (Dharmendra Pradhan of petroleum and Jayant Sinha in finance come to mind), the rest of the ministry has largely underperformed. Arun Jaitley, to say the least, has not blazed a new trail in finance, with most of his policies being marginal variations of UPA-2 and bureaucratic solutions.

If Modi is thinking out of the box, he should be thinking wholesale change, and not be reactive only to the Jaitley crisis.

It is time for a major cabinet reshuffle, something that will wow the country, not a marginal tinkering. Plus he must vow to clean up cricket. The key elements of this strategy should be the following:

One, key portfolios like Finance, HRD and Health must have new incumbents, if necessary by co-opting technocrats from outside the BJP. A Raghuram Rajan or an Arvind Panagariya, now rotting in Niti Aayog, would be bold moves. Elevation for Jayant Sinha would also be an experiment worth considering.

Two, Jaitley probably needs to be given a big role in the party and media management.

Three, a commission to clean up cricket and support for creating a rival to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) would also go down well as reform moves. The corruption-infested BCCI is the underlying cause of much embarrassment to the Modi government, not only in the Jaitley affair, but earlier too in the Lalit Modi crisis, which singed the reputations of Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje.

2016 is likely to see a cyclical turnaround in the economy. It is worth beginning it with a bang by ushering in big changes in government to give it new sheen.

The reality is that Modi is and will remain unchallenged in the party, never mind the occasional detractors. It is time to use this power to set the ball of performance rolling in a new and better direction. He has nothing to lose by acting boldly.