No one should imagine that in a parliamentary democracy, where ministers are picked from among members of Parliament, talent alone determines allocation of ministerial portfolio. Any prime minister has to balance a variety of political considerations, picking from a given set the best team possible. Hence, it would be wrong to see the reshuffle carried out by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh only in terms of what it does to the quality of his team. There are provincial, caste and other considerations that go into picking and choosing ministers and so one must also be mindful of the political balance imparted by a given team. Elections in Uttar Pradesh and Kerala, the situation in Andhra Pradesh and such like would have played their role. However, even after accounting for all such considerations, the team that Dr Singh started with in May 2009 was not the best team he could have had. Moreover, many of the ministers he picked disappointed him with their sub-optimal performance. While these considerations alone had necessitated a reshuffle, the sharp decline in the United Progressive Alliance government’s credibility and image in the past six months, with allegations of corruption dominating news headlines, the prime minister was under pressure to rejig his pack, drop some ministers, re-allocate portfolios and promote a few good men. Ideally, a complete shake-up would have been the best option. Within the given pulls and pressures of coalition politics and the play of power politics in the ruling Congress party, Dr Singh has managed to punish a few of the non-performers, reward a few of the performers and marginally improve the quality of his team, but not by as much as he could have, especially if some of the younger ministers had been promoted.
The overall impact of the reshuffle exercise would, of course, be to strengthen the prime minister’s grip over his government, but he could have dropped a few like sports minister M S Gill which he was unable to do. By shifting Kamal Nath, Praful Patel and Murli Deora the prime minister has punished ministers who had come to acquire a reputation for playing favourites or just incompetence. In moving Jaipal Reddy to petroleum, he has rewarded integrity, keeping Telangana also in mind, but not necessarily performance. In promoting Salman Khurshid, he has rewarded both integrity and performance. That he has been able to get even this much in the face of stiff opposition from some power centres suggests that his writ still runs in the coalition. Dr Singh’s message of perform or get sidelined (if not perish) must not get diluted and must extend to the choices he makes even within the ranks of the civil services. To expect that the reshuffle, as carried out, will in itself restore new momentum to the Union government and improve the government’s image and credibility would be unrealistic. This partial effort at weeding out incompetence and rewarding competence has to be followed up by a new agenda of governance reform and of ministerial accountability.