By Swapan Dasgupta
There is something in the air of Lutyens’ Delhi that
makes its inhabitants heady over any real or proposed reshuffle in the Union
Council of Ministers. During his five years at the helm, Rajiv Gandhi pandered
to this yearning for unending churning by changing his ministerial team every
six months or so. By contrast, Manmohan Singh has been partial to continuity.
Maybe this has been due to the fact that he was never a complete master of his
own destiny. Buffeted between coalition imperatives and the non-playing
captains in 10 Janpath, he has operated under severe limitations.
Last week’s reorganisation of the team was a little
different from half-hearted exercises of the past. First, this time there were
no coalition pressures. Apart from a solitary Minister of State from the
Nationalist Congress Party who was quietly palmed off to his mentor Sharad
Pawar’s ministry, the alterations were exclusively a Congress affair. Whether
the Congress has the comfort of numbers to be able to confine its sights
exclusively to the party is something that must await the course of the winter
session of Parliament beginning later in November. However, to the outside
world the Prime Minister and Congress President maintained the pretence that
the party had a majority on its own. The real significance of the openings created
by the departure of the Trinamool Congress and the reluctance of the DMK to
fill its ministerial quota were quite deliberately understated.
Secondly, this delusion of grandeur was further
maintained by the special accommodation of Andhra Pradesh. That the late Y.S.
Rajashekhara Reddy contributed disproportionately to the success of the UPA in
both 2004 and 2009 is a matter of record. However, it is clear that the
benefits that accrued to the state in October 2012 stemmed less from Andhra’s
clout in the Congress than from its vulnerability. The elevation of Pallam Raju
to the Cabinet, the inclusion of Chiranjeevi as a Minister of State with
independent charge and the accommodation of other junior worthies may actually
seem a desperate measure to somehow contain the pincer movement by the YSR
Congress and the Telengana Rashtriya Samity. Recent opinion polls suggest that
the Congress may find it extremely difficult to win more than five Lok Sabha
seats in the event of a snap election.
If the past is any indication, the mere induction of
ministers doesn’t by itself change political equations in the localities. The
Government of Atal Behari Vajpayee had some five Cabinet ministers from
undivided Bihar at the time of the Lok Sabha dissolution in 2004. However, both
the BJP and its ally did disastrously in Bihar at the parliamentary election.
Likewise, when the V.P. Singh wave first hit Uttar Pradesh, Rajiv Gandhi tried
to offset his estranged colleague’s influence among Thakurs by resurrecting
Dinesh Singh from oblivion and appointing him External Affairs minister. This
had very little effect on the ground.
Inducting a politician into the ministry may, at
best, give an individual enhanced status in the locality. But symbolic gestures
rarely translate into the larger political goodwill the Congress craves for.
What matters is the wider political message.
To the extent that the Congress was desirous of
packaging last week’s reshuffle as an attempt to give more responsibility to
younger ministers the party was aware of the importance of the big picture.
Although statistically the average of Manmohan Singh’s team has fallen marginally
from 65 years to roughly 64 years, the Congress was successful in conveying the
message that the process of generational change that was being demanded has
begun, albeit modestly.
More important was the emergence of another theme
that the Congress, perhaps understandably, was not unduly anxious to
over-emphasise: the domination of the economic ministries by those who have the
reputation of being reformers and who share the Prime Minister’s broad economic
philosophy. The injection of a measure of ideological coherence into the
economic ministries is no doubt welcome. At least the coming months may see an
end to the confusion over and resistance to market-based reforms. Manmohan may
even take advantage of his nominee in the Railways Ministry to try and remove a
major infrastructural bottleneck. Indeed, so high is the apparent optimism of
being able to achieve reforms and ensure fiscal consolidation that Finance
Minister P. Chidambaram announced the Government’s willingness to travel by the
fiscal roadmap of the Vijay Kelkar committee. Chidambaram has also been less
squeamish about putting political pressure on the Reserve Bank of India to cut
interest rates.
What this implies is something quite dramatic. Does
the behaviour of the Prime Minister and Finance Minister indicate that the
Congress has decided to go slow on Sonia Gandhi’s desire to expand the welfare
net? Expressed in another way, has the Prime Minister decided to liberate
himself from the shackles of populism for the remainder of his tenure?
The signs are confusing. At one level the Government
has chosen to persevere with its in-principle decision to raise user charges in
power, fuel and railway travel. At the same times, there is frenzied activity
to ready the Aadhar scheme for direct cash transfers before the election. The
Government, it would seem, is keeping both options ready. The outcome of the
Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh election and the course of the parliament session
will us whether the regime will turn right or left. The state of the opposition
will shape the final judgment.
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