A K Bhattacharya: A slow start for Manmohan

NEW DELHI DIARY

The good news for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is that he can further increase the size of his council of ministers. Last Saturday, he had got himself and 67 ministers sworn in by the President.

The law, mooted and passed by the previous government, stipulates that the total number of Union ministers cannot exceed 72. So, Dr Singh can appoint four more ministers.

Needless to say, this should give him a lot of comfort as he is under tremendous pressure to accommodate more members of different coalition partners in the Union ministry.

It is this pressure, which perhaps explains why Dr Singh failed to enthuse his well-wishers with his first major exercise after the President appointed him as India's 13th prime minister.

The exception of course was his choice of P Chidambaram as the finance minister, which has gone down very well with the people, the markets and India Inc.

Thirteen years ago, Dr Singh and P Chidambaram rewrote India's major economic policies as the finance minister and the commerce minister, respectively, in the Narasimha Rao government.

There are now expectations that the Manmohan-Chidambaram duo in its second stint would be as effective and innovative to give India higher growth and more efficient economic administration.

But if the choice of P Chidambaram constituted hope, a host of other decisions pertaining to the formation of the council of ministers last week was a big disappointment. Dr Singh has been for long a believer in the saying that charity begins at home.

Governance can be better if the size of the government is smaller and less unwieldy. In his stint as the finance minister in the 1990s, Dr Singh had mooted the idea of scrapping the posts of several secretaries in key economic ministries with a view to reducing the size of the government.

And the best way of starting this exercise was to merge ministries. Once the ministries were merged, the ministers took the first hit. And soon bureaucrats also would get the right message and the size of the government would start reducing.

As finance minister, Dr Singh failed to initiate that process and the failure was understandable. But now that he is the prime minister, it is not unreasonable to expect him to set the ball rolling once again.

For instance, why should there be different ministries for petroleum and natural gas, coal and mines, power and non-conventional energy resources? Why can't these be merged and rechristened as the energy ministry?

In Dr Singh's council of ministers, however, four different ministers head the four portfolios. Three of the ministers are of cabinet rank and the ministry of non-conventional energy resources has got a minister of state with independent charge.

A similar question arises in the transport sector. Why can't the ministries of railways, shipping, surface transport and civil aviation be merged into a mega ministry for transport, with different departments looking after the relevant modes of transport?

There could be one cabinet minister in charge of the transport ministry and two or three ministers of state looking after the different departments.

But Dr Singh has chosen three cabinet ministers to head the ministries of railways, shipping and surface transport, while the ministry of civil aviation has a minister of state with independent charge.

There was a time when all the transport-related ministries were under one cabinet minister in charge of the transport ministry. That experiment did not last for long. But there is no reason why Dr Singh should not have tried it again at a time when the focus is on better governance through a leaner and more responsive government.

Politicians vying for a cabinet berth will oppose such an exercise, because they would lose the perquisites of being a minister. But a tough stand on the question of keeping the size of the ministry to the bare minimum would have been a bold message to the political classes that they now have to contend with a prime minister who means business.

But far from sending out such a signal, Dr Singh has actually done quite the opposite by creating new ministries. The Vajpayee government had brought the department of company affairs under the administrative control of the finance ministry.

But Dr Singh has now created an entirely new ministry of company affairs with a minister of state with independent charge. Corporate India would have been better served if the department of company affairs had remained part of the finance ministry.

The experience of the last couple of years showed that the finance minister was more suited to take care of issues pertaining to corporate laws, instead of their being looked after by a different minister.

No one as yet knows what will happen to the disinvestment ministry. But a new central ministry for non-resident affairs has already been created. It is equally unclear as to what the brief of the new ministry will be.

In the first few weeks of Dr Singh's tenure as finance minister in 1991, there was a lot of excitement and drama as new path-breaking policies were announced. His tenure as the prime minister has begun quite differently. There is no excitement. No drama. And no inkling of any big change that he would like to bring about in the way the government is run in this country.

akb@business-standard.com