A little tinkering

The reshuffle in the Union council of ministers on Sunday has seen the induction of seven new ministers of state. Only one of them "" M S Gill as minister of state for sports and youth affairs "" has been given independent charge. Its significance lies as much in entrusting a capable administrator with the task of ensuring the smooth conduct of the Commonwealth Games, scheduled for 2010, as in taking away that responsibility from a minister who was engaged in a debate, pointless at this stage, over how much money should be spent on such an international sporting event. Of the six other new ministers of state, two "" Jyotiraditya Scindia and Jitin Prasada "" are part of the Congress youth brigade and their induction should be seen as the first steps to prepare the next generation of leaders. For the immediate future, it will be unrealistic to expect them to make much of a difference in ministries run by A Raja and Ram Vilas Paswan. Rameshwar Oraon as the junior minister for tribal affairs is expected to strengthen the Congress party's tribal equations, while V Narayanaswamy as a representative of the "other backwards" from Tamil Nadu in the parliamentary affairs ministry and Santosh Bagrodia, a businessman from Rajasthan, as the junior minister for coal indicate that Manmohan Singh's latest reshuffling of the ministry has been aimed largely at taking care of the different interest groups within the political establishment. As for taking care of the coalition partners, there is Raghunath Jha of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, who has been made minister of state for heavy industry and public enterprises.

Six ministers have been axed. It has been put out that most of them have paid the price for non-performance, but that may not be the real story. At least one of them, Suresh Pachauri, has already been accommodated in the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee as its new head. Indeed, if non-performance were to be the criterion for removing ministers, there are quite a few senior ministers whose heads should have been on the block. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar's non-performance needs no recounting. Poor agricultural growth, rising food prices and the absence of urgently needed reforms in the agriculture sector should have spurred any minister in charge of the agriculture portfolio into action. But Mr Pawar has remained unmoved and has seemingly continued to accord greater priority to the country's cricket administration. In defence of Manmohan Singh's continued tolerance of Sharad Pawar's non-performance, it could be argued that the prime minister's hands are tied by the compulsions of coalition politics. But no such alibi is available with respect to Arjun Singh, whose record as the human resource development minister has been wholly unedifying. Mr Singh has remained singularly unmoved by the challenge of reforming the country's education system, despite all the evidence of a growing shortage of qualified people in one sector after the other. Any student who can afford it or who can get a scholarship prefers to go abroad, so much so that billions of dollars are now being spent in this fashion "" even as the universities at home remain ossified places where quality education cannot take root.

The performance of the power ministry also has remained abysmal, with the government missing its target for adding new generation capacity year after year, including the one that has just ended. The power shortage has reached proportions not seen before, and all the talk of reform has meant little. Yet, the power minister Sushil Shinde survives in Urja Bhavan. Jairam Ramesh's induction into the ministry as a minister of state can help only if he is given adequate elbow room by his senior colleague. In short, the reshuffle has resulted in only a marginal tinkering with portfolios. Instead of bold moves, there is a diffidence that does not promise improved performance in the last year of the government.