A K Bhattacharya: Retaining status quo
RAISINA HILL
| All governments have fads. These are mostly evident at the time of ministry formation. New ministries are either created with great fanfare or some existing ones are merged to create an omnibus ministry. At the time of their formation, sufficient justification for such restructuring is given by the government. But after some months, these new ministries are either forgotten or simply ignored. And when a new government comes in place, often these newly created ministries are junked. |
| Rajiv Gandhi created an omnibus ministry of transport in 1985 and made Bansi Lal its cabinet minister. The ministries of shipping, road, railways, and civil aviation were made part of the transport ministry. As far as reforms go, this was hailed as a major move forward. There was a general expectation that the creation of the transport ministry would lead to elimination of several posts and help reduce the size of bureaucracy. But in less than a year, the concept of a transport ministry was abandoned as Bansi Lal left for Haryana to become its chief minister. |
| Similarly, Rajiv Gandhi created the ministry of panchayati raj, soon after the amendments to the Constitution empowered the panchayati raj institutions as an important layer of administration. That ministry has survived all the governments that succeeded Rajiv Gandhi's. It may have been less important during the governments of HD Deve Gowda or Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But the ministry was not scrapped. However, it certainly has lost the status it enjoyed when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister. |
| The Vajpayee government is responsible for bringing about four significant changes in the formation of ministries. Three of these related to the creation of new ministries "" one each for the development of the north-eastern region, disinvestment of government equity in public sector undertakings and for overseas Indian affairs. The fourth change was effected to merge the ministry of company affairs with the finance ministry. |
| When the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was formed, the minister of company affairs was hived off from the finance ministry and made into a separate ministry. This was done presumably because Prime Minister Manmohan Singh needed to offer a substantial and meaty ministry to one of the members of the UPA's coalition partners, Rashtriya Janata Dal. So, Prem Chand Gupta was made the minister for company affairs. |
| Why was the company affairs ministry at all merged with the finance ministry? There is no clear explanation. Yashwant Sinha, who served as the finance minister for five years under the Vajpayee government, did not have the company affairs ministry under him. One possible reason could be that Jaswant Singh, a senior BJP leader who was made the finance minister in 2003, had to be given a ministry that was not only important, but substantial as well. And merging the ministry of company affairs with the finance ministry was one way to achieve that goal. Also, this signalled to India Inc that Jaswant Singh wielded more power than any of his predecessors in North Block did. |
| So, what changes did the Manmohan Singh government bring about in the structure of the central ministries? Not much, really. The only notable changes were that the ministry of company affairs was made independent and the ministry of disinvestment was redesignated as a department and brought under the jurisdiction of the finance ministry. This too was done to please the Left allies of the UPA government, since they did not want any privatisation or disinvestment. The status quo was maintained vis-a-vis the ministries for the development of the north-eastern region and for overseas Indian affairs. |
| The UPA government may have effected the least number of changes in the structure of the ministries. So, it may not be accused of too many fads. But this also indicates how the present government has refused to experiment with changes in order to improve the government's effectiveness. The only change it experimented with was the creation of the National Advisory Council, which was once headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. For the first two years, the Council made a big difference to the functioning of the government. But for the last one year, the Council without any chairperson has remained virtually dormant. And the UPA government continues to function with broadly the same old structure of ministries that the Vajpayee government left behind. |