Give the scope, the expanse and the strength of the BJP’s footprint in the country, Narendra Modi has quickly diverted the demonetisation debacle of his government, his first direct failure, to a very high octane cabinet reshuffle, with all the drama, the sound and the fury of a Modi project, heavy on spin and style.
The cabinet reshuffle raced though, and to be completed barely three hours before the Prime Minister leaves for China, is being held in the backdrop of the opposition upping the ante and getting its first serious issue to target the Modi government after a very long hiatus. According to our staff reports, the Reserve Bank of India’s report on almost 99% scrapped notes coming back has come handy for the 18 opposition parties to jointly expose Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his failed demonetisation experiment, by holding rallies across the country.They shall be holding rallies to enlighten people “on Modi taking them for a ride” with all sorts of false claims, using the banner of rebel Janata Dal(U) leader Sharad Yadav’s ‘Sanjhi Virasat Bachao (save composite culture)’ overdrive.The Opposition wants to hammer out how the scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes had badly hit the economy and the lives of the people and yet Modi is not prepared to apologise, as it neither eliminated black money, fake currency or corruption as he had claimed and instead it badly hit employment and businesses.
This uproar in economic, financial and social sector circles has been dwarfed, albeit temporarily by the “perform or perish” bugle blown by Amit Shah and Narendra Modi. The rapid fire resignations of ministers, by even getting some ministers to get off planes meant for one destination to come back to base and meet the big Shah, and the news adequately publicised, was very much a part of the script, with an aim to make “delivery” the pivot of government functioning.
The last minute new surprises of inducting some of India’s most competent and high profile bureaucrats, who are with the party, into his cabinet or council of ministers is an attempt to infuse professionalism and freshness into his team.
This for obvious reasons needs to be seen in the Goa context. Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar must adopt the same formula, at least for BJP Ministers and advise the allies to follow the same principle with their ministers. The first performance appraisal, marking ministers performances as ‘P’ (positive) and ‘N’ (negative), must commence shortly before March 2018. The performances have to be viewed with a microscope in areas which let the BJP down terribly in the 2017 Goa Assembly elections.
It is now that the Chief Minister must outline the Key Performing areas (KRA’s) of each of his BJP ministers. But before he does that he needs to appraise himself on two key issues of creating jobs and increasing revenues. And then he should pick key departments one by one, as follows, with at least one non negotiable directive for each:
Health: Transforming rural health care and segmenting infrastructure in the villages, taking the load off GMC and district hospitals.
Panchayats: To ensure that the powers they have of local self governance is exercised to the hilt, including the power of making village level plans, which have been taken over by ODPs.
Power: Uninterrupted and steady power to all industrial units and reduction of tariff to domestic households.
Urban Development: To ensure that the Smart city project is completed and delivered in Panjim
Home: Making Goa drug and prostitution free:
This has to be an initiative led by the Chief Minister himself and a serious effort to get at the big daddies of the drug trade and eradicating this menace, will only give him pass marks.
While this is only a glimpse of what governance should look like, an achievement on all of the above will place the government on course for a successful term.
The people of Goa are watching.
