A K Bhattacharya: The benefits of a lean ship

RAISINA HILL

The Union council of ministers today has 62 members, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. There are 26 Cabinet ministers, including one minister without portfolio, nine ministers of state with independent charge, and 27 ministers of state.

Whatever may be the reason, Manmohan Singh has managed to keep his ministerial team lean. The law permits him to appoint at least 18 more ministers. In any case, the Cabinet in the last year-and-a-half has seen five vacancies, none of which has been filled.

That's why everybody expected Singh to effect a large-scale Cabinet reshuffle last week. Some members of the Cabinet were expected to be dropped, some new faces were likely to be included and some ministries were to be reshuffled. None of that happened. Instead, two existing ministers were loaded with more responsibilities and two ministers' responsibilities were reshuffled.

It was widely believed that Power Minister P M Sayeed would be dropped. The information and broadcasting ministry was expected to be taken away from Jaipal Reddy and entrusted with Congress spokesperson Ambica Soni. Reddy lost that ministry, but got the urban development ministry in return. And, of course, no new ministers were inducted and, hence, Soni was retained in her party job.

The prime minister was reportedly not too happy with the handling of the petroleum and natural gas ministry. His complaint was that the sensitive petroleum product pricing issue had been brought back into the lap of the government, while the strategy should have been to distance the government from the process of deciding on petroleum product prices. Worse, there was a point when even the petroleum and natural gas ministry was seen as deflecting the petroleum product pricing issue to the Prime Minister's Office. So, this ministry was also expected to be impacted by the much-awaited cabinet reshuffle.

That all these expected changes did not happen was also due to Singh's inability to make a convincing political case for a large-scale overhaul of the Cabinet. After all, Cabinet reshuffles are a political exercise at meeting aspirations of the political party in power. And when there is not just one political party in power but a coalition of political parties, the job becomes even more difficult. Dropping a minister becomes as difficult as inducting a new one.

A safe option in such a situation is to make marginal adjustments in the portfolios of the ministers without upsetting anyone who is politically powerful. It is this art of exercising a safe option that Singh has perfected over the past one-year-and-a-half. This is a different Manmohan Singh. When he was the finance minister in the early 1990s in the P V Narasimha Rao government, Singh would not hesitate in making changes in the top team of officers assisting him in North Block. Even before completing the first year in office as finance minister, he put in place a new team of officers hand-picked by him and in-charge of key positions.

Unfortunately, as prime minister, he does not enjoy the same flexibility. It seems he is conscious of this limitation politics has imposed on him. That is why he is comfortable with a lean Cabinet with so many portfolios being dumped on one minister, instead of insisting on a full-fledged Cabinet reshuffle. A lean Cabinet also allows him to focus more on the bureaucracy and ensure that it delivers in ministries where the work agenda may not get expedited through the ministers.

Also, there has been no perceptible fall in the performance of those ministries, which have now been made additional responsibilities of other ministers. For instance, the coal ministry has been with the prime minister himself for about a year. Industry is yet to complain about any problems it faced while dealing with the coal ministry. Similarly, no one should complain if the ministries of overseas Indian affairs and sports have been made additional responsibilities of existing ministers.

P V Narasimha Rao, it is said, had successfully used his political indecisiveness as a potent strategy to succeed in politics. Manmohan Singh, who is said to have learnt politics at Rao's feet, may well have succeeded in improving governance by not insisting on a Cabinet expansion.