Some new ministers have questionable credentials. Many are round pegs in square holes: Kuldip Nayar

INDIA’s political scene looks far less murky than before. This was reflected in the first session of parliament after the general election. There was no shouting, no boycott and no walkout. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also promised a bipartisanship approach in his first speech at the Lok Sabha.

What has really brought about the change is the demoralisation of the opposition and the confidence of the ruling Congress. The latter depended on some 12 parties to run the government after the election five years ago. This time it needed only 66 members to form the government at the centre. The needed support was provided by its pre-poll allies, ambitious Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra, fiery Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal and pro-LTTE Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu.

On the other hand, the regional netas (leaders) have been cut to size by the voters. The communists who made the Congress government possible last time are too downhearted to criticise it even when their main agenda — opposition to the sale of public undertakings — has been treated with contempt. The prime minister has announced their privatisation. The BJP, even with 130-odd members, feels too humiliated to challenge Manmohan Singh who was described by BJP leader L.K. Advani as a nikamma (good for nothing) prime minister during the last election campaign.

The Congress, it seems, can dictate terms if it so decides. For example, the party can get the bill on reservations for women in parliament. But it is not pushing it because the party wants a consensus which is on a 20 per cent reservation instead of the 33 per cent which the Congress promised in its poll campaigns.

Yet the party had its own Lok Sabha speaker. Meira Kumar, who has been unanimously elected, is competent and soft-spoken. But she is a member of Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s team of loyalists. The office demanded a person of stature. Jawaharlal Nehru once said that the speaker represented the house which in turn represented India. When Sonia Gandhi made up her mind to have a Dalit woman as the speaker, the rest followed. In the process, the position of the speaker has been devalued. She made the office of India’s president a non-office. Now she has done the same thing in the case of the speaker.

It would have always been difficult to find a successor to Somnath Chatterjee who annoyed even the communists, once his comrades, by adopting an impartial posture and giving independent rulings. But Meira Kumar’s feet are far too small to fit into his big shoes. But then institutions have always bothered the Nehru dynasty. Indira Gandhi demolished practically all the institutions that her father, Nehru, had built. Sonia Gandhi has completed her mother-in-law’s unfinished work.

I can’t figure out the fuss made over the constitution of the new council of ministers. It was given out that both the prime minister and the Congress president had to balance the demands of regions, religions, castes and the like. If even after 62 years of independence, the party that won 206 seats could not choose people on the basis of merit and integrity, it should realise its helplessness against the demon of caste it has created. True, caste has stalled communalism. But both represent forces which taint the idea of a secular India.

I also cannot understand the time — 11 days — taken to constitute the council of ministers. It may serve as a corrective to both the prime minister and the Congress president to know that Nehru submitted his list of ministers on August 14, one day before they were sworn in. There was no draft, no deletion and no addition to the list. Nehru wrote down the names of his ministers and their portfolios, straightaway and in his own hand.

Despite claims of background checking, some members of Manmohan Singh’s council of ministers have questionable credentials. Many are round pegs in square holes. Too much has been made of the youth issue. The average age of ministers is 63. Only five are below 40 and none of them has been given cabinet rank.

I can understand the reason for dropping the two most loyal ministers to the dynasty, Arjun Singh and H.R. Bhardwaj. They had outlived their utility. But why drop a sensitive minister like Saifuddin Soz? He had the courage to write an honest report about the lack of rehabilitation by the Madhya Pradesh government of Narmada Dam affectees.

It looks to me as if there was no problem in selecting the first 11 cabinet ministers who were sworn in along with the prime minister. When it came to allotting portfolios, only six passed muster. Then it was a Mahabharat, to use the words of an insider. So powerful is Rahul Gandhi, son of Sonia Gandhi and the prime minister-in-waiting, he could force some of his close followers’ entry into the government. Were Rahul’s nominees to become a ginger group within the party that applied pressure for clean governance, their appointments would serve the purpose.

Belonging to the upper middle class, as they are, it may be difficult for them to extend rural job-guarantee schemes to the urban unemployed because the upper half would have to carry the burden of expenditure. They are already unhappy over the government’s statement that the price of oil in India would be at par with the international rate.

At the same time, the government has announced its policy of disinvestment. The sale of government undertakings will lower its earnings. Where is the leeway to spend on schemes to help the poor? It is apparent that if the wealth is spread out — necessary for the lower half to benefit — the eight or nine per cent growth target would have to be cut. In other words, the upper-middle-class MPs who represent Rahul Gandhi’s think tank may not travel the path hewn before the election to attract the aam aadmi (ordinary person).

The kurtaand pyjamais a welcome sight in the Lok Sabha because it reminds me of the post-independence parliament. The kurtaand pyjama, then in khadi, may represent the fashion, not the determination to uplift the people. All such persons are the Baba log of the British days. At the same time, a jumbo council of 79 ministers is not in keeping with our limited resources. Nehru’s first cabinet had just 14 members. It is not the expenditure that I have in view. Such large paraphernalia does not send the message of austerity which the nation needs to follow.

Peace in South Asia becomes all the more important. This may help the government save the expense involved in positioning a large number of troops on the borders. The Taliban should make us realise that the old, entrenched ideas can only be defeated if a government has a moral side to it.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi.