The Cabinet Reshuffle: What Really Happened And How The Media Got It All Wrong—Part II

In Part I of this article, we analysed how the commentariat missed the wood for the trees when discussing the Cabinet reshuffle and some of the changes in the Cabinet.

Now we come to Arun Jaitley, supposedly the most powerful Cabinet member after the Prime Minister. Modi knows him much better than we do. The impatience of the BJP supporters notwithstanding, the Finance Minister’s stature has not grown in the government in its first two years.

First, Jaitley lost the Defence Ministry to Parrikar. Now, he has lost the I&B Ministry to Venkaiah Naidu. This is over and above the insider account that Swarajya had shared with its readers about how Jaitley’s powers were gradually getting delegated to top economists in the Finance Ministry and NITI Aayog in the very first year of this government.

Not satisfied with the extent of clipping of Jaitley’s wings, Modi ensured that the Finance Minister called on him time and again in the course of the preparations for Budgets 2015-16 and 2016-17 to get the boss’s vision translated as per the boss’s roadmap. This much is enough, Modi would believe, being a leader who never experimented drastically in Gujarat.

As an additional reason, one may factor in the Lutyens’ network, most significantly comprising the Delhi-based media, which never wrote or spoke a word against Jaitley throughout his career. But that group has shrunk in the new council of ministers. The new ministers hail from areas that are too far-flung, minding their regional businesses so far, to be part of the capital city’s elites.

Though Jaitley has formidable experience in keeping journalists in good humour, finance was his prioritised portfolio from which he couldn’t be expected to spare too much of his time for I&B. So, in comes Naidu as his new senior.

How successful will Naidu be in managing journalists? Here is another insider’s account. It’s an informal meeting of scribes with some ministers from the NDA-1 government. While our fellow professionals are enjoying what is known as “high tea”, one of them approaches Naidu, shakes hands with him, saying, “Aur sir, kaise hain (How do you do, sir)?” Naidu smiles back.

So far so good! Next, this journalist puts his hand on Naidu’s belly and, making circles on the leader’s belly with his hand, asks, “Maamla theek hai na (Everything alright)?” The BJP’s then media manager and head of its intellectual cell is stunned. Other journalists in the hall look on with disbelief, but Naidu does not mind the scribe’s crude display of proximity to him. The two are still good friends.

In the meantime, another good networker from the “D4”, or “Delhi 4”, of LK Advani’s era gets Naidu’s Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs: Ananth Kumar. “D4” or “Delhi 4” was a deprecatory term used to refer to four BJP leaders who were believed to form Advani’s coterie: Jaitley, Naidu, Kumar and Sushma Swaraj.

The last of the quartet has been managing external affairs without fuss and turning it into an object of silent admiration for NRIs, PIOs and this country’s frequent international travellers. She addresses their concerns with alacrity, first via Twitter, and then ensures their safety and security by alerting the foreign missions and, if need be, making personal visits to disentangle the knots.

The issue that the Congress had raised about her daughter being in the battery of lawyers of Lalit Modi was effectively countered by the minister in Parliament; it is now a settled debate.

Not as high profile as the four ministers mentioned above but quite a recognisable face, Ravi Shankar Prasad could not solve the call drop issue as Minister for Communications. Forget known critics of the BJP, the party’s own supporters, some of them with a massive following on social networking sites, had begun saying Prasad couldn’t figure out the head or tail of telecommunication technology. In fact, even in the NDA-1 government as the I&B Minister, he had failed to persuade cable operators to switch to the Conditional Access System or CAS.

A lawyer, Prasad replaces DV Sadananda Gowda in the Law Ministry. A Good Samaritan, Gowda, while losing his Railway portfolio to Suresh Prabhu earlier, was allegedly found to be devoid of the tact needed to manage bureaucrats, as few completed the tasks given to them by Gowda within the deadlines.

In the Law Ministry as well, some representations of the government in courts have caused a loss of face once in a while. Recall the stand taken on the Kohinoor issue recently, for example. In fact, awkward affidavits filed in the Supreme Court have been a nagging problem for the government, and the entity to be blamed for that is the Law Ministry. Gowda had to go.

Well, these were the big names. I will especially mention just one new minister whose work in the Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh belt was explained to me during the recent Simhastha Convention in Indore-Ujjain. Working with an NGO headed by a descendant of the yogi Lahiri Mahasaya, Faggan Singh Kulaste has transformed Adivasis with militant tendencies, touched their poverty-stricken lives with compassion and brought them from Maoism to the Hindu fold.

The Mandla district is one place where no tribal man, woman or child doubts that Adivasis are Hindus. Few ministers in the past and present governments can boast of bringing about such a social transformation at the grassroots level. Delhi-based media does not even know about it. How can they report it?

Other new ministerial appointees will narrate their stories in some months. No doubt, these are no political bigwigs. Their personalities certainly do not permit making decisions or sticking to them, let alone look the boss in the eye. But you must be uninitiated to believe that Modi would have an Atal Bihari Vajpayee-like Cabinet. India has gone back to singular persona-driven political parties in the last 12 years.

As for expertise, if ex-FICCI Amit Mitra cannot turn the fortunes of West Bengal under Mamata Banerjee—Manmohan Singh’s futility under Sonia Gandhi is too well known for reiteration—of what use is a minister’s domain knowledge? Expecting experts of domains to head the respective ministries was callow.

Yes, this is Modi’s show, a one-man show, which journalists sometimes get right, but then forget again as they did in the last three days. This is Modi’s gamble. Come 2019, he gets credit for everything good from the supporters and all the brickbats for everything the detractors believe has gone wrong.