First of all, this is not a movie where one can ascribe a Rupee figure and evaluate “Hit or Flop”. 100 day evaluation is something that is done in the west. In India other than providing the talking heads a topic to rant or rave, it does precious little. This brings me to the second point. In India, the moment the government machinery gets involved with all the babus in fray, things move at a glacier like speed. Getting anything done in 100 days is a miracle which is beyond even a miracle worker like Modi. However, one can get a sense of the direction of the government by the decisions taken. Most decisions taken so far are the kind which will any kinds of dividends any time soon.
So what DO I make of the government’s performance so far? Clearly Modi himself has changed the ways in which our government works. He has a vision which is evident in the “macro-decisions”. He is getting India involved in major deals with the three biggest economies in the world and that is in just over three months. Clearly he is as different from his predecessors as night and day. However he has come to the center from a high performing state and thus is going through a learning curve – clearly leading Gujarat and India are two different tasks. What we were hoping was that the cabinet he chooses will ease that learning curve and Delhi insiders like Jaitley, Swaraj and Rajnath Singh will do the heavy lifting thereby freeing some time for Modi to focus on governance. It is at this point that things start to become murky.
Rajnath Singh’s tenure so far has proven to be a damp squib. No key decisions have been made since he took over the all-important ministry. This is what NV Subramanian says about him:
Hitting a low, he has been identified with the chauvinistic pro-Hindi drive of his government which will end up destroying goodwill for it across the country, but is that all Rajnath Singh stands for as home minister Rajnath Singh shows no pride and does not have the bearing of a home minister. Now newspaper reports say Singh has been cut out of the appointment process of senior officials.
Arun Jaitley who has lost the only election he contested has shown only one talent – being at the right place at the right time and identifying Modi’s ascending star. He has positioned himself in getting not one but two plum ministries. This for a man who has no public or party worker support (how can lower level party worked support and respect a man who has never won an election?) and is in such terrible shape that he cannot stand for more than 30 min. He clearly suffers from every disease known to affect the super-rich. This is what NV Subramanian says about his first budget:
Arun Jaitley’s first budget was thunderously underwhelming. People inside government say Modi had little hand in the budget apart from making suggestions here and there because he did not want to cramp Jaitley’s independence. Very likely, he was testing his minister of finance. Whatever the prime minister’s verdict, the country was far from being satisfied. It reflected in comments that it was a “UPA-3” budget which might as well have been presented by Chidambaram. Smug Chidambaram said the same.
Not only has he presented a lackluster budget but also failed to rein in food prices. I do not know under whose purview the price control falls but it has to be under Finance or Home (bringing the hoarders to justice) but clearly these two men have utterly failed in price control and thus earned the sole black mark against the Modi government so far. Of course only Narendra Bhai knows why a seldom performing minister like Jaitley is handling two very important ministries.
The lesser said about Swaraj, the better it is. The woman who, after failing at every attempt to scuttle the good ship Modi, demanded a “samman janak” ministry. Right now she is no more than a glorified bureaucrat with Modi doing all the heavy lifting. Of course making deals with the three biggest economies is a task too important to be left with a person who could not rule Delhi effectively.
When Modi took office, he had to make compromises in doling out ministries. Pressures from RSS and Delhi establishment would have been too much to bear for a man who was a newcomer to the cesspool known as New Delhi. He is repeating what he did when he became a new CM – learn the ropes from people in the know. This is why he selected a number of people from the Vivekananda Foundation. These are people whose ability and patriotism are beyond reproach. The same cannot be said about his ministry because he had to select people from a certain pool of elected and selected (by RSS and Delhi establishment) people. Unfortunately, Modi does not have the luxury of a gradual learning curve. He has a learn fast, act soon and show immediate results so he can lay a claim to a much needed and an essential second term.
If you read an article by NV Subramanian, Modi is surrounded by people whose lives have been altered; whose morals have been questioned; whose hitherto pathetic work ethics streamlined with Modi’s own; whose easygoing lifestyles of entitlements challenged and changed. These are powerful people who are not going to give up the fight easily. Modi is up to the challenge as we saw during his tenure in Gujarat. However, he needs performers and people he can trust – the sort he had in Gujarat.
Modi needs to revamp his cabinet. He is firmly ensconced in the PM’s chair and has given his cabinet enough opportunity to show, if not results then vision and direction. His mid level ministers (the ones with less than samman-janak portfolios) have responded very well. Modi needs to identify the snake in the grass babus and non-performing ministers in his government and weed them out before they become millstones around his neck. Clearly Jaitley (who is just one of them) with his ongoing health issues need to take leave and enjoy his crores and leave governance to people who know how. Now that sacrifice would be patriotic and endear him to people like me. If he and others like him do not leave with dignity then they need to be dragged out screaming. Otherwise Modi can forget about his second term.
NV Subramanian’s article on evaluating ministers can be read at:
http://newsinsight.net/TeamModi-4..aspx#page=page-1
NVS’ article on the
chakravyuh around Modi can be read at:
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