Letters: Cabinet arithmetic

With reference to the well-timed editorial, "Reorganise, don't reshuffle" (November 18), there cannot be two opinions about the possible reasons for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's likely move to reshuffle his cabinet. The most important reason could be to penalise non-performers and inject some young blood into the cabinet. However, it would be naive to think that the cabinet does not have good performers. Of course, a few ministers have been indifferent performers, more interested in raking up controversies than in doing their job.

I fully endorse the editorial's view that if and when the PM decides to restructure his cabinet, he has to take into account its implications for the structural reform programme. Further, the matter of realignment of ministries into clusters of interrelated domains remains shrouded in mystery.

One expects the PM will ensure that only people of impeccable reputation and who are experts in their fields are inducted into his cabinet. Of course, the political journey is likely to be rocky and full of newer challenges for the government in the wake of the National Democratic Alliance's debacle in the Bihar Assembly elections, for which the PM had campaigned extensively. Although he seems to have got his electoral arithmetic wrong, one hopes that he gets his cabinet arithmetic right.

Kumar Gupt Panchkula

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