Modi 3.0: Portfolio allocation reflects defiant attitude to issues, haughty brinkmanship

If the constitution of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s jumbo council of ministers on Sunday (June 9) was an uneven mix of continuity, change and compromise, the allocation of portfolios on Monday (June 10) to the 72 ministers, particularly the 30 with a cabinet rank, was largely about maintaining the status quo.

Faith in ‘Big Four’

By retaining the top four faces of his previous regime, Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, in their earlier roles of ministers for defence, home, finance and external affairs, respectively, Modi hasn’t simply signalled continued confidence in the Big Four. Reducing the portfolio allocation to such an appraisal would be too simplistic, and even grossly misleading, when seen in the context of the people’s mandate in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls that saw the BJP’s brute majority of the past decade eviscerate substantially.

Rather, if anything, Monday’s exercise has the leitmotif of the classic Narendra Modi – unapologetic, defiant, uncompromising (unless electoral compulsions dictate otherwise) and with a compulsively ravenous appetite for confrontation. Woven into the seemingly status quo-ist cabinet blueprint of Modi 3.0 – or more accurately, Resurrected NDA – is the prime minister’s revulsion to admitting that he and other principal actors of his previous government had erred on any count – be it the economy, maintaining the integrity of independent institutions, particularly the various central probe agencies, the foreign policy or even the country’s sovereignty.

Additionally, when seen through the prism of the supposed concessions that Modi has had to make towards his allies, particularly Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) – the two crutches on which the prime minister’s government now stands for the first time in a decade – the allocation of portfolios reflects a hangover of haughty brinkmanship.

Wait and watch moment for NDA allies

It was not surprising that members of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc were quick to mock Modi’s allies, variously suggesting that ministers, especially from the TDP and the JD (U) quota, were forced to pick “leftovers” from the portfolio distribution feast in which the BJP tucked in nearly all plum ministries.

The TDP’s K Ramamohan Naidu was handed the Civil Aviation Ministry while Rajeev Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’ of the JD(U) got Panchayati Raj along with Fisheries, Animal husbandry and Dairying. Hindustan Awam Morcha founder and former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi may be ecstatic over being given a cabinet berth despite being the only MP from his party in Parliament but it remains to be seen if the oldest member of Modi’s cabinet is content with the modest ministry of MSME industries. Former Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy of the JD(S) has had to make peace with the ministries of Steel and Heavy Industries while Modi’s self-proclaimed ‘Hanuman’, LJP (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan has been given the rather mundane food processing ministry.

With the INDIA bloc happy for now with just testing the nerves of Modi’s partners instead of actively coaxing them into an early divorce and these allies too, save perhaps for Naidu’s TDP, firmly bound by their own electoral compulsions, it is unlikely that the portfolio allocation will expose any immediate faultlines in the NDA. The allies would, as one JD (U) leader told The Federal, adopt a “wait and watch” policy much like the INDIA leaders; hoping that an electorally diminished Modi would come to value them soon instead of riding roughshod as he did in his previous two stints as prime minister.

No corrections made  

What must then assume greater significance is the distribution of work among ministers from the BJP’s own quota and what it potentially indicates. It is widely acknowledged now that electoral setback the BJP faced in the just concluded Lok Sabha polls, which brought the saffron party’s 2019 tally of 303 seats to 240, was propelled by the electorate’s anger on issues of price rise, unemployment, agrarian distress and Modi’s apathy towards farmers, the Agniveer scheme and the perceived assaults of the Constitution, institutional independence and personal freedoms.

These issues had formed the fulcrum of the INDIA bloc’s poll narrative. The Opposition also weaved in other issues such as Modi’s muddled foreign policy and increased Chinese transgressions into Indian territories in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, among other things.

The prime minister’s decision to retain each of the ministers directly responsible for most of these matters during the previous government shows that he isn’t willing to concede failure on any of these counts during the previous regime.

Sitharaman, who presided over disastrous economic policy decisions with a cavalier dismissal of any suggestion that price rise and unemployment were real issues, has returned to helm the finance portfolio.

Rajnath will helm defence again despite the uproar over Agniveer, the Chinese intrusions into Ladakh and Arunachal and matters concerning the politicisation of higher echelons of the Armed Forces which may not be kosher for an elaborate commentary.

Jaishankar, the career diplomat turned politician, will helm the MEA again though on his watch India entered into frequent diplomatic skirmishes with past allies and adversaries alike.

And, Shah, who presided over the most ghastly ethnic cleansing conflict in Manipur, politically subjugated the entire population of Jammu and Kashmir (and Ladakh) for five straight years, unleashed the tyranny of probe agencies against political rivals (and some present allies) and justified every assault on federalism during the past decade, will be the Minister for Home Affairs yet again.

Confrontation over conciliation

This brazen perversion isn’t limited to the Big Four of Modi’s regime. Other ministers who have returned to their previous responsibilities, some with additional portfolios, or have been assigned to new and more significant roles follow the same trend.

Ashwani Vaishnaw, whose tenure as railway minister saw the horrific Balasore train tragedy and a gradual crumbling of railway infrastructure and services – overcrowding, delays, poor quality of food, large scale train cancellations, discontinuation of scores of trains et al – due to the government’s singular focus on Vande Bharat trains, will once again be steering the nation’s lifeline. In addition, he will also helm the crucial ministries of Information and Broadcasting and Information Technology.

The portfolio allocation also shows that though the 18th Lok Sabha will have the highest bench strength of the Opposition in a decade, with its 234 MPs only 60 short compared to the NDA’s 293, Modi would prefer confrontation over conciliation to guide the functioning of Parliament.

What else would explain his choice of Kiren Rijiju as the minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Arjun Ram Meghwal as his deputy? As law minister for a brief stint during Modi 2.0, Rijiju had single-handedly turned even a somewhat establishment-oriented higher judiciary hostile and was quickly shunted out to the less glamorous Earth Sciences Ministry. Over the past decade, Rijiju and Meghwal had both been among the BJP’s admittedly large brigade of MPs who would routinely berate the Opposition with vile comments.

Second chance for non-performers

In a Lok Sabha that now quite literally has a very thin line dividing the Treasury and the Opposition benches following a bitterly fought election, the need was to have a Parliamentary Affairs minister who enjoyed not just political heft but also the confidence of the ruling party’s rivals. Rijiju can boast of neither.

Most other senior leaders who have made the cut as cabinet ministers too inspire little confidence given the portfolios they have been handed. BJP president JP Nadda, who returns to the Union cabinet after five years with the same portfolio – Health and Family Welfare – in which he had failed to make a mark in the first Modi government while Piyush Goyal returns to the Commerce and Industries ministry.

Similarly, Bhupendra Yadav will return to the Environment Ministry which he helmed in the previous government too while simultaneously presiding over large scale governmental nods for massive mining and infrastructure projects that swiftly felled large tracts of forests. Hardeep Puri, who as petroleum minister in the previous government did nothing to ease the consumers’ pain over rising fuel prices, will helm the same ministry yet again while ML Khattar, who was eased out as Haryana chief minister earlier this year after turning his state into a recurring conflict zone over issues of agrarian protests, paper leaks, caste conflicts and so on, is set to assume charge of the ministries of power and housing.

Silver lining

The silver lining in this otherwise unfortunate tale of continuity, confrontation, callousness and conceit, arguably, are the responsibilities given to Gadkari and former MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. While Gadkari, who is credited with the massive facelift and expansion of India’s roads and highways network over the past decade returns once again as minister for Road Transport and Highways, Chouhan will be the new minister for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare as well as for Rural Development.

As chief minister of a largely agrarian Madhya Pradesh, Chouhan was instrumental in ushering in rampant agrarian reforms that brought him laurels even from the Congress-led UPA government. In fact, Madhya Pradesh, under Chouhan’s stewardship had become a regular recipient of the Centre’s Krishi Karman Award during the UPA-II era. Though Chouhan’s record was tainted by the 2017 Mandsaur Goli Kand, during which police fired upon protesting peasants, killing at least five farmers, he stridently tried to reach out to the farming community in the subsequent years.

Chouhan’s appointment as agriculture minister comes at a time when Modi and the BJP have become highly discredited among the farming community, particularly in states such as Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. In lassoing the former MP chief minister for the ominous task, Modi has, perhaps, unwittingly conceded that agrarian distress is among the foremost challenges for his government going forward, particularly since the INDIA bloc-triggered push for granting MSP a legal sanctity is likely to gather greater momentum as agrarian Haryana and Maharashtra move towards assembly polls due in four months.