#dnaEdit: Streamlining his boat

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to abolish all 21 Group of Ministers (GoMs) and nine Empowered GoMs (EGoM) — through which the erstwhile UPA government attempted to resolve inter-ministry conflicts, formulate policies on specific issues, and expedite decision-making — was on expected lines. For a strong leader like Modi, the GoMs and EGoMs which had come into vogue during Manmohan Singh’s stewardship of the Central government, had outlived any utility that they still possessed. Being smaller entities than the Cabinet, the UPA government had assumed that they could quickly iron out differences. But the fatal flaw of these GoMs was that Manmohan Singh delegated the task of heading these groupings to senior ministers. It was a blatant abdication of prime ministerial responsibility and matters came to such a pass that no minister seemed accountable to the Prime Minister or were required to seek the PM’s guidance on policy matters. That the EGoMs could ratify decisions on behalf of the Cabinet and GoM decisions required only formal Cabinet approval, only worsened the former PM’s plight.

Predictably, the GoMs and EGoMs failed to do their bidding, as most rarely met, leaving important decisions on subsidies, investments and project clearances pending inordinately. Many of the GoMs set up for all and sundry issues like river-interlinking, amending the Minimum Wages Act, setting up a Kolkata-Amritsar industrial corridor, and superannuation and pension benefits for various central government institutions never convened. The failure of the GoM mechanism was signalled last June by Manmohan Singh himself when he created the Project Monitoring Group in the Cabinet Secretariat to fast-track mega projects. From 80 GoMs with Pranab Mukherjee heading 50 of them at one point, the whittled down number of GoMs at the end of the UPA’s tenure was Manmohan Singh’s belated attempt to retrieve authority and surmount the growing clamour for replacing him with a stronger politician.

The Modi government’s decision marks the return of collective responsibility of the Cabinet and the individual responsibility of ministers in decision-making. It also places the Prime Minister back at the helm of affairs. Modi’s directive that ministries and departments will now expeditiously process the issues pending before the EGoMs and GoMs and take appropriate decisions at the level of ministries and departments has a rider. “Where the ministries face any difficulties”, said the PMO release, which can be interpreted as a euphemism for differences of opinion, it will be the Cabinet Secretariat and the PMO which will facilitate the decision-making process. In contrast, Manmohan allowed a GoM comprising the finance and telecom ministries to tackle the 2G spectrum issue. He thus failed to prevent the 2G scam and then wanted the PMO kept at “arm’s length” from the then telecom minister A Raja in a shocking display of weakness.

By scrapping GoMs, Modi has sent out the message that governance cannot slow down because of differences over policy decisions between top ministers or the Prime Minister and the National Advisory Council as happened in the UPA government. The new Prime Minister has quickly stamped his authority on his Cabinet with this decision and promoted himself as sole arbiter. Modi’s overwhelming political supremacy in the BJP, his eagerness to play a guiding hand, and the absence of difficult allies is enabling the NDA government to chart a new course of governance. Ironically, like the GoMs, a strong PMO can override the Cabinet too.