Modi’s cabinet looks jaded: it needs new ideas, new faces and clearing out deadwood

TThe Narendra Modi government, after 12 years in power, needs a significant (and not cosmetic) transformation. Although he bounced back from the 2024 setback by registering huge victories in West Bengal and Assam, after Haryana, Maharashtra, Delhi and Bihar earlier, these political successes are not an end in themselves. Despite a good macroeconomic record so far, there is no guarantee that the government will be able to guide the economy through the current global and technological disruptions unless it has competent people to manage operations. He should assume that it might only take one major failure for the entire political narrative around his successes to begin to collapse.

Leaked NEET papers and continued loss of public confidence in CBSE exam results (which have been mismanaged when new technologies require a prolonged testing period) show that someone is either sleeping on their watch or is not very competent. The needle of responsibility points to Dharmendra Pradhan, who is surely not indispensable to the Modi government, either politically or economically. What should worry us all is that Modi has chosen fairly ordinary talents to lead a ministry that oversees one of India’s most important challenges: educating our millions. It is difficult to understand why this important ministry is run solely by people with no real expertise in the matter.

The ministers who are clearly doing their job well are a handful (Amit Shah, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Nitin Gadkari, Jyotiraditya Scindia, to name a few). A few others, thanks to Modi’s vested interest in their ministries, are doing well in finance, commerce, defense and external affairs. The rest could bear further scrutiny. Finance and defense could also benefit from younger ministers who can get things done.

Last Thursday (May 21), the Prime Minister had a four and a half hour marathon meeting with his cabinet, where he impressed upon them the need to focus on governance reforms and administrative efficiency. However, this must be followed by sacking non-performing ministers and replacing them with real talent. Not everyone has to be a politician or even a member of one’s own party. They could very well come from the business world (provided they have no conflicts of interest), or even from Telugu Desam or other allied parties.

The Prime Minister would do well to take some important steps:

A, spending more time with ministers who need to undertake difficult reforms (e.g., Shivraj Chauhan in agriculture) or with allies who may have good ideas on how to revive growth (Chandrababu Naidu comes to mind).

Two, attempt a direct multi-party consensus on difficult reforms, in personally dealing with opposition leaders. The Prime Minister too often leaves this task to his lieutenants, which reduces their political impact. Opposition leaders can more easily say no to their lieutenants, but they might be more receptive if the prime minister were personally involved. Modi has significant political capital, and if he can’t spend some of it to promote big reforms, what good is that capital?

Three, it should not focus too much on collecting taxes, which often leads to putting undue pressure on the taxman to collect more from businesses. Instead, the Minister of Finance should aim to achieve deeper reforms of tax administration, where the rules are clear for everyone and the possibilities for arbitrariness are much less than today. This is not to say that the Modi government has not carried out any tax reforms. This is indeed the case, but we could do better. The term “tax terrorism” should not exist in India Inc’s vocabulary.

Fourthe considerable growth of the gift culture must be curbed. Once again, this cannot be done without broad political consensus. The Prime Minister may want to achieve this by legislating his “one nation, one election” election proposal, which on its face is a good idea. But how can this be achieved without the support of most of the major parties?

Also read: After Bengal, the BJP must secure the Siliguri corridor and renew ties with Tarique Rahman

This is the perfect time to push for big changes, which requires a sweeping overhaul of Modi’s cabinet and an expanded circle of experts in the field to tackle various challenges, from jobs to artificial intelligence to defense modernization.

We need new faces, new ideas, more responsibility. The Prime Minister must remove the deadwood from Cabinet.

R Jagannathan is an editor and former editorial director of Swarajya magazine. He tweets @TheJaggi. Opinions are personal.

This article was republished from the author’s personal blog. Read the original article here.