The Hindu : Expansion and expedience

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 10, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Expansion and expedience

THE PRIME MINISTER'S Cabinet expansion, which saw the re-entry of former Ministers Mamata Banerjee and Gingee Ramachandran, wears the unmistakable stamp of an attempt to fortify the ruling coalition. To a large extent, the compulsions behind this exercise lay in the immediate past. The rupture between the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh, which eventually led the former to withdraw support to the Vajpayee Government, may not have threatened its stability. However, what the BSP's withdrawal has done is to reduce the cushion of comfort that the Prime Minister enjoyed. The BSP has 14 MPs in the Lok Sabha and the loss of their backing is enough to shake off any complaceny about a parliamentary majority that has been, at the best of times, somewhat slender. To some extent, the reasons for the expansion also lie in the not-so-distant future. With the general election due in late 2004, the BJP leadership is aware of the importance of building as wide a coalition as possible — a strategy that served the party well in the last two Lok Sabha polls. Viewed in this light, the return of the Trinamool Congress' Ms. Banerjee and the MDMK's Mr. Ramachandran to the Union Council of Ministers seems very much like an attempt to shore up whatever political support is available in the run-up to the general election.

The return of the volatile and politically unreliable Ms. Banerjee was not as smooth as either she or Mr. Vajpayee would have liked. Her swearing in as Minister Without Portfolio was a hasty and inconclusive compromise that followed her conspicuous reluctance to take charge of the Coal Ministry. This is not the first time Ms. Banerjee has expressed her dissent over accepting portfolios she regards as beneath her status. Earlier this May, she chose to stay out of a Cabinet expansion for similar reasons. During that expansion, the Trinamool Congress leader was also upset by what she perceived as an attempt by a section of the BJP leadership to have one of her party colleagues (a dissident of sorts) sworn in against her wishes. This time around, the only issue relates to her portfolio and her willingness to be sworn in without one reflects a weakening in her bargaining position, a result of a steep decline in her popularity in West Bengal and her diminished influence on national politics.

Whether Ms. Banerjee is successful in getting a Ministry she thinks is in keeping with her status remains to be seen. She quit the Vajpayee Ministry with a bang — raising the issue of the Tehelka scam and taking the high moral ground to attack his Government on a number of occasions — and seems to have returned with not so much as a whimper. As for Mr. Ramachandran, who was forced to quit after his personal assistant was arrested for collecting money against transfers of officials, his return is bound to raise many eyebrows. The rationale for re-inducting the MDMK leader, who was questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation, is that no charges have been pressed against him. Nevertheless, public anxieties about how such a well-oiled money-for-transfers racket was allowed to flourish at the level of his personal staff are bound to remain. Given this, it is difficult to understand why and how reported Prime Ministerial reluctance was overcome to make the re-induction of Mr. Ramachandran possible. His appointment to the Ministry of Textiles only reinforces the feeling that this Cabinet expansion — which Mr. Vajpayee has said will be his "last" — is marked above all by the politics of expediency.

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