Surprise packages in PM's Cabinet

I don't know who you thought would emerge as stars in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet when it was sworn in eight months ago.

Two surprise packages so far have been Mani Shankar Aiyar at petroleum and panchayati raj, and Praful Patel at civil aviation.

P Chidambaram is always a candidate for star status, and to his credit he has managed to bring down the rate of inflation even as oil prices remain high.

But his first Budget was disappointing; now that he has promised a dream Budget in the second round (unwisely, I think, for it raises expectations), we will have to see if he delivers.

Among the old guard, experienced warhorses like Pranab Mukherjee, Natwar Singh, and Sharad Pawar will do steady state jobs, neither surprising nor shocking you with their performance, though one might have expected more from Mr Pawar than he has demonstrated so far.

The perennial disappointments will be the alliance heavyweights whom the prime minister can't get rid of, men like Lalu Prasad, while Shivraj Patil will always beg the question: why is he there in home?

Then there are the bright boys with dodgy reputations, who will never become stars because there are too many stories going round about what they are up to.

Dayanidhi Maran at telecom is another potential candidate but he has chosen to stay in the background and, since the sector is doing well, little attention has been focused on him, while Jaipal Reddy has disappeared into the woodwork and seems at odds with today's media world.

Unlike a presidential system, no prime minister has a really free hand in Cabinet formation, for there are too many political factors to be kept in mind.

But Dr Singh could usefully ask himself whether he needs to be able to show more by way of effective governance, in areas where the Left will not come in the way.

The issue before the country is not just contentious reform measures, important as they are; the issue is also effective management of all the sectors where the government spends money or has a decisive say in what goes on.

There is plenty crying out to be done, and what is required is a keenness to show results and the ability to deliver.

The power sector, for instance, could do with some of the dynamism shown by Aiyar and Patel, whereas the incumbent Mr Sayeed is at best an also-ran.

The railways have had too many ministers with what one might call a Bihar mindset to economic management (Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Paswan -- not to speak of Mamata Banerjee, who belongs to that group) and desperately need a contemporary leadership to put them on a new track.

One of the mysteries of Indian politics is why a vital subject like human resource development (i.e. educating the young) is always given to the oldest guy in the Cabinet, and someone whom the prime minister would ideally like to keep on the shelf.

Arjun Singh has been there before, and other than trying to de-saffronise the place, has done little of note. Surely the Congress has paid its debts, whatever they are, to Mr Singh and we can look for a replacement with more ideas and energy?

Administrative reforms are another key area where new ideas and some enthusiasm for the job would be welcome.

When it comes to citizen interface and record-keeping, we should be talking of e-governance and emulating some of the experiments in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

For faster decisions, we should be changing administrative procedures, and also looking at whether tested methods need to be updated for today's speed of communication and transport (specifically in areas like disaster response and crisis management).

We should be looking for ways of better monitoring the efficacy of government spending, which is a very live issue when a big-budget jobs programme is being debated.

In an age of job mobility, we should be offering alternative tracks that do not need 35-year commitments to the same organisation, with mid-career training programmes, more lateral entry for those with subject expertise, and early retirement for the unfit.

It is not that staff work on this has not been done; so how about dusting off those files and showing some action?