July 27, 1998

Vajpayee starts assessing his ministers and officials

Prabhu Chawla

At last, there is some good news emanating from an otherwise lacklustre Prime Minister's Office (PMO). Friends of Atalji have finally managed to persuade Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to take a good hard look at his ministers and a defiant and unresponsive bureaucracy. For three months now, Vajpayee has been haunted by the charge of non-performance and rattled by adverse media reports. Now, he has decided to give his Government a new look. If he sticks to his resolve, the country will soon see at least a dozen new ministers and over two dozen new secretaries even as a dozen of them are shown the door. Incumbent BJP ministers may find themselves with new portfolios or having to deal with tough junior colleagues. Vajpayee hopes to implement his plan, which he terms the Formula For Revival (FFR), when Parliament's budget session ends on July 31. According to the FFR, ministers and senior officials will be judged purely on the basis of how they deliver on the National Agenda for Governance (NAG). And for this, Vajpayee is his own counsel, there are no self-appointed ombudsmen from the Sangh Parivar around.

Vajpayee has already set a record of sorts by being the first prime minister since 1980 to attend Parliament every day. Indeed, Vajpayee has decided that over the next two weeks he will closely scrutinise important decisions taken by all key departments. One aim of this exercise is to ensure that his ministers and their staff are not involved in any controversial deals. Vajpayee has received complaints from his partymen and investigating agencies that some ministers and civil servants have delayed clearances of policy decisions and is said to suspect the emergence of a new nexus. He was livid when he recently learnt that his office was fooled into shifting an upright secretary who had objected to clearance being granted for a project promoted by an influential NRI trader-turned-industrialist. Vajpayee, however, had the last laugh when he ensured the minister concerned did not get an official of his choice as replacement.

What Vajpayee finds even more galling is the utter failure of his ministers to sell some of the bold decisions taken by his Government. The worst culprit is the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry which has done precious little in this regard. For example, Vajpayee strongly opposed the clamour to use Article 356 to dismiss an unfriendly state government, but he never received the accolades which he truly deserved. The overwhelming feeling in the PMO is: we have done much to doggedly pursue the nag by conducting nuclear tests, introducing bills on women's reservation and the Lok Pal, opening up the insurance sector, promising to repeal the three-decade-old Urban Land Ceilings Act and initiating steps for heavy disinvestment of PSUs. But still it is stuck with the label of a government unfit to rule.

Some of Vajpayee's ire is likely to be directed against the I&B Ministry, headed by the articulate and highly-ambitious Sushma Swaraj. Under Swaraj, the 1,600-strong Press Information Bureau has done little to stem the adverse publicity, not to speak of functioning as an effective propaganda arm of the Government. Instead, all she has managed to accomplish is to turn the powerful Prasar Bharati against the Government by promising things she cannot deliver. Vajpayee, if he is not vetoed by the RSS, is determined to have his own team and also occupy the driver's seat as well.

Issue Contents | Write to us | Subscriptions | Syndication

© Living Media India Ltd