Opinion - Editorials   

An unedifying exercise

A key to understanding a government's overall direction and policy thrust is the composition of its Council of Ministers. In May 2004, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance wrested power from a communal regime of impatient liberalisers with an unmistakeable agenda of aligning India closely with the United States. The overarching foreign policy commitment of the new Government, as stated in the National Common Minimum Programme, was to reverse that thrust and "pursue an independent foreign policy keeping in mind [India's] past traditions. This policy will seek to promote multi-polarity in world relations and oppose all attempts at unilateralism." Twenty months on, much has happened to indicate that the Manmohan Singh Government has turned its back on that solemn promise. The message to be read in Sunday's reshuffle and expansion of the Union Council of Ministers is that this Government is headed Rightward — in economic policy but even more so in foreign affairs. Notable among Cabinet Ministers who have had key portfolios taken away from them are Mani Shankar Aiyar, by common consent the best-performing Minister in the Cabinet, and Jaipal Reddy. A few months ago, Mr. Reddy lost the Information and Broadcasting portfolio and in this round he has been divested of the Culture Ministry, which suffered enormous institutional damage under National Democratic Alliance rule. Mr. Aiyar has been shifted out of the crucial Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry, where he demonstrated an independent and bold strategic thrust. He doggedly pursued the Iran-Pakistan-India strategic pipeline through New Delhi's denials and obfuscations. More recently, he concluded a path-breaking agreement with China on a joint bid for energy assets in third countries.

It is hard to avoid the reading that Mr. Aiyar paid with his job for advocating a vision of energy security that was seen as going against the Government's strategic pro-U.S. policy and its increasing acceptance of unilateralism and unipolarity. The Prime Minister has chosen to retain the Ministry of External Affairs, which fell vacant following the exit of Natwar Singh, another senior Minister seen to be out of sync with the Government's changed foreign policy orientation. A perception, confirmed by official sources, is that this has been done to avoid embarrassment to the U.S. ahead of President Bush's March visit. The chop and change exercise is the more intriguing for the retention of heavyweight portfolios by Ministers with an undistinguished record. A case in point is the retention of the Law portfolio by H.R. Bhardwaj, whose chief contribution to good governance has been secretly to help Ottavio Quattrocchi get his bank accounts, frozen in the Bofors case, freed. The UPA Government's first major team change is of course Congress-centric. The allies have lost nothing and gained nothing despite being represented by a number of underperforming Ministers, some of them with dubious records and far from clean. Most of the new Ministers, it seems, have been rewarded for nothing other than loyalty to 10 Janpath and sycophancy. All in all an unedifying exercise in tuning up the functioning of the Government.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

An unedifying exercise
Behind Karnataka's regime change
The OIC and India: signals of a re-think
Pouring troubled water on oil
Five old-new faces in the Union Cabinet
Focus on gender statistics
Now the real challenge for Hamas
Change in cast
Cable TV law
Court verdict
Say `no'
Heartening

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu