On July 7, Prime Minister Narendra Modi effected the most sweeping change in his council of minister since he first ascended the Delhi throne in 2014. He dropped heavyweights such as Dr Harsh Vardhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar and brought in first timers such as Ashwini Vaishnaw. The reshuffle, which many prefer to call dramatic and beyond the conventional reshuffle or expansion, took many people by surprise and has several lessons. It is aimed at protecting Brand Modi from criticism over, among other things, grave mishandling of the second wave of Covid-19 infections. It is also aimed at the big state of Uttar Pradesh, which goes to polls in 2022, two years before the national elections in 2024. But most importantly the changes were to reinforce the image of PM Modi as a tough leader. For him, no decision is difficult to take – from demonetization in 2016 to abrogation of Article 370 in 2019.
In the big reset, the PM has sent out another message: that in his government, if the non-performers are shown the door, the doers are awarded, too. If there was an exit of six Cabinet ministers, seven junior ministers were elevated to the Cabinet rank.
The three big heads that rolled on July 7, some just a few hours before the rejig, are Harsh Vardhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar.
The former health minister had to go because of the government’s mishandling of the second Covid-19 wave. Since April, when there was a massive crisis in India over shortage of medical oxygen, the Modi government has been under criticism even by the middle-class families, who had earlier stood solidly behind Brand Modi. Almost every family has lost someone among them or among their known ones to Covid because of a short supply of oxygen. Though Harsh Vardhan’s exit gave the Opposition the fodder to attack the government over admission that the Covid-19 was mishandled, for the Modi government it’s a course correction.
Ravi Shankar Prasad, who handled Law and Justice, Electronics and Information Technology and Communication ministries, had to go in the middle of the massive face-off with microblogging site, Twitter, over the new IT rules. Modi faced criticism on social media over the way his government handled the impasse with Twitter. Prasad had to go – it was social media that built Modi’s image in the first place.
As Information and Broadcasting Minister, Prakash Javadekar’s job was to defend the government, especially in media, domestic and foreign. He was found wanting and was shown the door.
It is no secret that this government is run by the Prime Minister’s Office and not by individual ministers, who are only implementers. But Modi cannot take the blame for anything and so the individual ministers had to go to prevent further singing of the PM’s image. Modi is known for his penchant for former bureaucrats and professionals – the council of ministers prior to the reset had former Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officers S Jaishankar and Hardeep Singh Puri. This time, the PM has brought in former bureaucrats Ashwini Vaishnaw and Ram Chandra Pal Singh. Vaishnaw, who has a management degree from Wharton, is the new whizkid as he got the railways and IT ministries when portfolios were announced for the new inductees.
Uttar Pradesh sends 80 MPs to Lok Sabha and is the most important state for any political outfit. In 2014, BJP got 71 seats here. The party wants to retain ground in 2022 to gather steam for 2024. For this reason, a fifth of new ministers are from UP. The number of ministers in the Modi council is now 15, one fifth of the total strength. This has its own message.
Another feature of the reshuffle is the caste arithmetic. Out of 77 ministers in Modi ministry, 27 are OBCs (other backward classes). Modi himself is an OBC, the first to become the PM in India. The support of OBCs is vital in UP to ward off challenges from the Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal combine, both parties espousing OBC causes.
The reshuffle has come when the government is a little short of the halfway mark in its second term. Modi has, through this purge, established the distinction between ministers and the Sarkar. The ministers have been held responsible but Modi remains the undisputed leader of the party.
But the new Team Modi may not find it easy to sail through to its full term. There are challenges in the form of petrol price rise, loss of jobs in the organized sector due to the pandemic, and the impending third wave of Covid-19. The anti-CAA protests, farmers’ agitation, communal riots in Delhi, prolonged internet ban in Jammu and Kashmir and the debilitating second wave of Covid-19 have already taken some of the sheen off the 2019 mandate, which was bigger than that of 2014.
