On BJP’s talent deficit and other ramblings
A recent article by Keshava Guha (https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/opinion-the-modi-fication-of-bjp-and-india-2590485) argues that one of the lesser-acknowledged factors that enabled Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ascendancy was the death of senior leaders within the BJP who belonged to PM’s generation but died before turning 70.
Guha cites the examples of Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, Pramod Mahajan, Gopinath Munde, Ananth Kumar, Manohar Parrikar, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley in BJP. He says that if they were alive, all these leaders would have become senior ministers in the centre or chief ministers and brought in administrative talent and acumen.
Guha argues that this lacuna created by the death of these leaders have led to a loss of competence. And the ruling party and the country are paying a steep price for the same. He says that we have ended up with a cabinet dominated by political lightweights and retired bureaucrats. And BJP’s alleged talent deficit is a consequence of losing a generation.
Modi government’s less than impressive performance in handling the economy characterized by rising joblessness and falling GDP has led many to allege a serious talent deficit in the Modi cabinet. Many in the economically aspirational young population are deeply distressed. One sees little scope for upward mobility if one is not part o of the SIME (Startup, IT, Markets or Elections) ecosystem.
And one is not sure how long the robust gains in equity markets will continue once central banks across the globe stop their aggressive bond purchases and start hiking interest rates. Admirers of the government blame the lacklustre economy on COVID, but India’s GDP growth rate halved from FY 17 to FY 20. Similarly, India’s unemployment rate was at a 45-year high in FY 18, a year after demonetization.
One more factor that adds credence to talent deficit assumptions is that a tenth of the ministers with cabinet rank comprises new entrants to politics from the world of diplomacy and India’s elite civil service. Civil Servants have become high profile ministers in the past, but one is unsure whether their ascendancy was so swift. The only exception I can think of is Yashwant Sinha, who became India’s finance minister six years after he quit IAS.
KR Narayanan, India’s ambassador to China and US, was a junior minister before he became vice president. Similarly, Natwar Singh, another career diplomat, was a junior minister and spent another 15 years as an opposition politician before he became India’s foreign minister.
Even Shashi Tharoor, a serious contender for UN Secretary Generals ‘position, served under SM Krishna in the foreign ministry. Compare this to the career trajectory of S. Jaishankar, who began his political career as a foreign minister.
But to say that the talent deficit and the consequences to the death of a generation of politicians are missing forest for the trees. I feel the so-called talent deficit and the subsequent effect in administration result from the changes in India’s coalition politics, the BJP and perhaps the working style of the Prime Minister.
Modi’s ascension to the top job also coincided with the return of single-party majority governments. The fact that BJP was not dependent on allies for its survival also meant that alliance partners did not get meaty portfolios, and the nation lost some competent ministers.
Let’s look at the big four in Vajpayee’s cabinet. Apart from LK Advani, the other three did not have any links to RSS. Jaswant Singh was an army man who joined BJP from Swantatra Party, Yashwant Sinha joined the saffron party from Janata Dal, and George Fernandes was a coalition partner.
Fernandes was equal to Advani and Vajpayee in terms of stature. He sacked a sitting Naval chief for defying civilian authority. I am not sure if one has come across such a bold decision by anyone other than the Prime Minister in the recent past. Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha were lightweights but were given a free hand.
Jaswant Singh was the government’s chief troubleshooter and was the face of India’s negotiation with the US after the nuclear test in Pokhran and Kandahar hijacking. But one should note that even these political lightweight senior ministers in NDA 1 could win elections. But two of the big four ministers in the current Modi cabinet are Rajya Sabha members. And no finance minister of India post-2014 was a Lok Sabha member.
Apart from these three senior ministers, Brajesh Mishra was PM Vajpayee’s Principal Secretary and National Security Advisor and was the effective number 2 in the cabinet. One also has to note the clipping of wings of Advani, who had little power outside his ministry. Vinay Sitapati, in his latest book Jugalbandhi which chronicles the Atal-Advani era in the BJP, quoting a minister in the Vajpayee cabin
et.
“It was not personal. Advani was a good party man, but he didn’t know governance. A Prime Minister has to rely on experts. What was Advani an expert on?”
One is not sure whether Modi makes such cold assessments of the skillsets of his colleagues and assigns responsibilities accordingly or how secure he is when it comes to someone else taking the limelight.
If there is a talent deficit in the current administration, we, the people of India, have only ourselves to blame. We made the mistake of giving one party too much power; a single-party majority government does not make sense in a country as diverse as ours. We get carried away by issues that ignite our passions instead of how robust the economy is. Like naive adolescents, we continue to believe that some fairy or knight in shining armour will save us from our troubles. Democracy is a much more complex system, and no individual can play the knight in shining armour even if he has a 56-inch chest.
