Fumbles and grumbles

After defence minister A K Antony’s embarrassing gaffe at the recent Army Day reception, the government is seriously reassessing his role in the union cabinet. (Antony mistook United States ambassaor Timothy Roemer for an Australian diplomat. Obviously he hasn’t been educated about the variation in accents between an American and an Australian!) The defence minister is a pucca Sonia Gandhi loyalist so prime minister Manmohan Singh is going to have to move carefully.But it is increasingly being felt that Antony is not pulling his weight as a member of the core committee that guides government policy or as a member of the cabinet committee on security affairs that is the apex decision making body on top secret matters. Also, he seems to lack the vision to revamp the country’s defence forces into a modern military with cutting edge weaponry and strategy doctrines. Currently, Antony wears two hats. He’s the union defence minister and also a Congress party office bearer in charge of Maharashtra. There’s a suggestion to let him concentrate on party work as Gandhi’s main troubleshooter and give the defence portfolio to someone else. The chatter about Antony in government has sparked off speculation about a cabinet reshuffle either before the budget session or immediately after when the Manmohan Singh government will finish the first year of its second term. But given the excruciatingly slow pace of decision making in the Congress, the speculation may remain idle gossip.* * *Young Jyotiraditya Scindia led the charge of the ministers of state at their meeting with Manmohan Singh last week. He complained bitterly about his senior in the commerce and industry ministry, Anand Sharma, accusing him of hogging the work and the limelight. According to eyewitnesses, the PM wasn’t very impressed. He shushed Scindia with a nod and a terse acknolwedgement of the complaints. It seems Scindia doth complain too much. He’s been given the same brief as his predecessors, Jairam Ramesh and Ashwini Kumar. That’s the work of two rolled into one. And Ramesh managed to do creative justice to his half-portfolio despite working with a hands-on, pro-active minister like Kamal Nath. He took up cudgels on behalf of UP’s carpet weavers and craftspersons from the Northeast, hunted out new export markets for them and pushed for financial and other incentives for them. In fact, Ramesh was as pro-active as Kamal Nath and impressed his bosses so much that they moved him to the power ministry, which was in doldrums under an ineffective minister. Sharma has been far more accomodative of his junior minister than many but Scindia wants more. Grumbles from the ministers of state may be another reason why Manmohan Singh could do a cabinet reshuffle once the budget session is over.* * *TAILPIECEUrban development minister Jaipal Reddy’s annual media lunch was strangely bereft of delicacies from his home region of Telangana. Even the famed Hyderabadi biryani was missing from the menu. Instead, there was plenty of Andhra food and something called Rayalseema chicken. When a journo jokingly quizzed him, Reddy answered smartly that he’s a cosmopolitan man, not embedded in any specific region.