Shah gets a boost, some surprises in Team Modi

In his second coming as Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has produced surprises in his choice of the senior tier of ministers, and not a few outside of it. None of these induce the suggestion that the choices made will necessarily make for greater efficiency. The chances are that the PMO will be more powerful than ever before.

The second most important inference is that Amit Shah will persist in his role as the second leg of the Modi-Shah diarchy. Only, as Union home minister, he comes now with enhanced powers. Within the BJP-RSS system, he may be deemed as Mr Modi’s successor whenever that time comes.

Given his previous experience in Gujarat as minister of state for home, he knows how the police system works and also knows only too well how to use the home department to further political ends. Further, no matter who succeeds him as BJP president, Mr Shah will continue to have his say in the ruling party’s organisational affairs.

The very detailed consultations — by all accounts many hours long, spread over days — the PM had with him on the choice of the Union council of ministers before Thursday’s swearing-in attests to his new stature. Mr Shah is clearly the second man in the Cabinet, ahead of Rajnath Singh, the new defence minister, and Nitin Gadkari, who retains his old job with the added responsibility of small and medium industries, although the latter two leaders were BJP presidents before Mr Shah. Mr Singh was called right after Mr Modi to take the oath by President Ram Nath Kovind, but is still not the real number two evidently.

Nirmala Sitharaman as the new finance minister is a total surprise. She is diligent and has been commerce minister at the minister of state level. But the finance ministry has a 360-degree view of the economy, and in India agriculture has special focus in this regard. The upshot is that the PMO will have greater oversight of this pivotal portfolio than during the tenure of Arun Jaitley.

The induction of former foreign secretary S. Jaishankar as the new minister of external affairs minister causes considerable surprise as he is a rank outsider to politics. Traditionally, the ministers of home, finance, defence and external affairs have been heavyweight politicians as they constitute the CCPA (Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs) or the CCS (Cabinet Committee on Security). The present ministers of finance and external affairs cannot be said to be in the category of the politically weighty. But Ms Sitharaman and Dr Jaishankar may be expected to proffer heavy duty backroom work and expertise, with innovation left to the PM himself.

There are other surprises too, such as the dropping of Sushma Swaraj (though she didn’t contest the Lok Sabha polls), Maneka Gandhi, Rajyavardhan Rathore, and the fobbing off of crucial ally JD(U) with one position in the Cabinet, which the latter disdainfully rejected. This might lead to some political turbulence.