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Team Modi: Leaner!!! Younger!!!


After a tumultuous delay, the PM-designate is finally the PM. Thank you for finally taking charge. Media has been bombarding us with PM news. The  past 10 days (16th - 26th May), the media space comprising 100 odd news channels, print media, radio and others wasted some millions of man-hours over meaningless, repetitive and often illogical coverage. Media was almost choking me with the PM news. But on the brighter side, I am now aware of the  minutest of details of our PM. Guess even Modi would not be aware of his own news.

As if the Modi fever was not enough, media took over the ministry formation to mysterious levels. Honestly speaking, I had a few good laughs on the bizarre nature of the information being broadcasted on the likely portfolio allotment. Till a few seconds before or rather even after the oath taking ceremony was over, the media went berserk. The brouhaha on the ministry allocation finally settled with Rashtrapati Bhavan releasing the list.

Lean is in: But is it healthy enough?

Bharitya Janata Party’s one of the campaign slogan “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” with a  total of 45 ministers who took oath including 23 Cabinet Rank, 10 Ministers of State (Independent Charge) and 12 Ministers of State. This is relatively a smaller team as compared to UPA-2 government which had a total of 74 ministers, all inclusive. Still, this is not the smallest cabinet, India has ever seen. Further, some of the ministries like Corporate Affairs and Overseas Indian Affairs which were carved out of Finance and External Affairs ministry, respectively by the UPA government are being brought back to their original fold. The NDA government has either merged or handed over more than one ministry to a minister. In all, Modi government has restructured 17 ministries into seven for expediting the execution and elimination of policy paralysis, if any. Key amongst these is Infrastructure (Road Transport and Highways and Shipping and Ports) to be headed by Nitin Gadkari and Energy (Coal, Power and Renewable Energy) to be led by Piyush Goyal among others. The move is exciting but on the flip side can add to too much concentration of power in few hands leading to dominance and lack of opinion on decision making, which can be biased. For eg: In order to boost power generation, the minister might make a move without carefully evaluating the impact on Coal. Also, it can add to the workload of the minister in-charge and lead to delays.

Young Blood!!!


The average age of Modi’s council of ministers is 57 years, whereas it was 58 years in the UPA-2 government. Hardly any difference in the average age, but there is a huge difference between the compositions of the two. In UPA-2 government, a good number of ministers were in their late 60s, Mid 70s and couple of them including the PM, 82 and Sis Ram Ola, 86 well above 80. The younger ones Sachin Pilot at 35 and Jyotiraditya Scindia at 42 were less than half the age of the oldest one. The Modi cabinet has only three ministers above 65 years of age (Najma Heptulah, 74, Kalraj Misra, 73 and Thaawar Chand Gehlot, 66). A total of 17 ministers are in the age group of 60-64 years, 16 are between the age group of 51-60 years and nine of them within 50 years of age. With the average age of majority of the country’s population being less than 30 years, the average age of the council is still twice that. But the positive development here is that 90 per cent of ministers being within the age group of 41-64 years, which makes it only a generational gap, rather two-generation gap in the previous government. And hence, I call it a younger cabinet.

To sum it up, though the government has started on a leaner note but sustaining this leaner appearance will be tough ask as the cabinet is likely to be expanded in the near future to relieve Arun Jaitley of Defense and Ravi Shankar Prasad of Law and Justice and also to accommodate the sulking party members and allies like Shiv Sena and also the representation from different states and geographies. As far as young blood is concerned, it’s always enthusiastic, energetic and restless to get over the task done, which is positive news for a crawling economy. On the flip side, the lack of sufficient experience and foresight, too much power, lack of fear and accountability due to a complete mandate and a tearing hurry to turn things around can lead to a repeat of AAP government in New Delhi. Though the possibility of this is bleak with Modi to guide and remember, he is himself power hungry and would want to be PM for the next 10-15 years at least.



To know more about the intelligence quotient and the suitability with the allotted portfolio to this leaner and younger cabinet, please log on to read my next blog.
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