The word revolution is often thrown around casually. Let’s extend that lexical liberty. First, take the ‘forcible’ and ‘overthrow’ part out from the dictionary meaning. Now stretch what remains so that it can cover an existing regime’s manoeuvres to extend its durability and appeal. Implausible though it may sound, what happened on June 7 in the Durbar Hall of Rashtrapati Bhawan was that sort of revolution.
Of course it was top down—grand gestures to signal the final dismantling of the old order. Narendra Modi likes to do things with a big bang. The scale is an important element in his thinking. Shake up the system—or replace it. Make everyone feel the impact. There are Cabinet expansions and Cabinet expansions—this one was a Sardar Patel statue among them, dwarfing all else. No other Indian PM has attempted something like this.
Yes, the size was for effect—43 taking oath, 36 of them newbies. What makes it a completely new order of things is the inductees. Except for a stray Jyotiraditya Scindia or Ashwini Vaishnaw, a Sarbananda Sonowal or Narayan Rane, Modi’s backroom boys have delved deep into India and plucked the hitherto unrepresented, and ushered them into the rarefied environs of Delhi Durbar, replacing the elite.
The odd Wharton graduate or Gwalior Maharaja aside, those who have come into the echelons of power are mostly those who would otherwise be lining up outside the residences of ministers when they come calling to their native land. The three key elements in the method here may sound like old hat—representation, consolidation and thanksgiving, all interconnected. What makes it stand out is the way it was executed, as if crafting a consummate revenge on the old order, the ultimate ouster of the Khan Market gang from the Durbar. The new order mocking the ancien regime.
Rajnath Singh remains as the only remnant of the past. Maybe a concession made keeping in mind the UP elections. Otherwise, from the Northeast to Tamil Nadu, and whatever is in between, it’s all about representation, and consolidation of votes with power-sharing, at least on the face of it.
Which votes? Of those who went with Modi in 2014 and 2019, hitching their wagon to the lodestar. As voters or leaders. Ministerial representation is, thus, a form of thanksgiving—a gesture intended at deepening symbiosis. Take Bengal. The Matuas, the Rajbanshis, the tea garden tribes and, geographically, Bankura/Jangalmahal have gone with the BJP since 2014. So in comes Matua leader Shantanu Thakur from south Bengal; Nitish Pramanik Rajbanshi from Coochbehar; John Barla, a tribal from Alipurduar; and Bankura MP Subhas Sarkar, a doctor vocal about Jangalmahal. Forget about the rest of India, very few in Bengal, beyond their community and influence groups, would have known about them!
Controversies around some of them, Pramanik and Barla for instance, are of little consequence. This is not about governance or competence, this is about a place in the power structure. From Pranab Mukherjee to John Barla, it’s nothing short of a real tectonic shift in the very centrestage of politics.
In Karnataka, the same pattern emerges. Shobha Karandlaje is not an unknown quantity in state politics. Vocal, Vokkaliga, virulently Hindu. Her elevation has much to do with securing the coastal belt and thwarting a possible Vokkaliga consolidation behind the Congress or JD(S) in 2023 and 2024, state and parliamentary elections. A quieter, old guard type Vokkaliga like Sadanand Gowda would not have sufficed.
From the other end comes Abbaiah Narayanawamy, a Madiga SC, unblemished, steadfastly RSS. His community currently goes unrepresented in the Congress organisation. Then, Bhagwanth Khuba, a Lingayat, a community that’s already a strong BJP votary, gets picked from the backward Kalyana Karnataka region.
B L Santhosh, RSS-BJP linkman, obviously had much to do with preparing the list of MoSes with BJP chief J P Nadda—the Udupi man has a keen eye for spotting grassroots RSS karyakartas with potential. The attempt here is to ensure B S Yediyurappa doesn’t remain the BJP’s only face in Karnataka. (The fourth inducted, also an MoS, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, brings in the urbane sheen, if not anything in terms of votes.)
Yogi Adityanath has been similarly contained by bolstering small socio-political alliances with non-Yadav OBCs, Kurmis in particular, and non-Jatav Dalits—call it a buffer around Yogi’s Thakur Raj, also against a probable erosion of support in the Jat farmer belt. With Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal (Sonelal) and six others, Modi’s Council of Ministers is filled with MPs from the other side of UP: Poorvanchal has five, Awadh four. Western UP only three, Bundelkhand two and Rohilkhand one.
With big names like Harsh Vardhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar out, no one thought of Santosh Gangwar. The Kurmi leader, who could neither deliver on the new labour laws that industry is hankering for nor remain quiet when Yogi mismanaged the second wave, is out. Instead, from the same community, Pankaj Choudhury is in. All young and energetic. Make no mistake. Whether Tamil Nadu or Gujarat, the driving logic was caste. Or some other calculation—like G Kishan Reddy, who many see as a probable Telangana CM candidate for BJP.
As for the rest—bogey words like governance, economy, inflation, unemployment and Covid—expect some ‘feelgood’. With Modi’s big-bang approach, people miss his small reforms. Now Amit Shah, heading the newly minted Cooperation Ministry, will work on small loans for farmers and MSMEs. Babu-turned-minister Vaishnaw will technocratise Railways. And the Maharaja of Gwalior will help unseat the Maharaja of Air India!
Santwana Bhattacharya
Resident Editor, Karnataka,The New Indian Express
(santwana@newindianexpress.com)