Except in the quirky quantum world, continuity and change are calamitous contradictions if forced to collide. The first is an uninterrupted force and the other is discrete in nature. Schrödinger’s cat comes to mind in the quantum world of Indian politics: alive and dead at the same time. Indians voted for continuity in the 2024 elections, giving Narendra Modi the third consecutive thumbs-up. The verdict also tinkered with the previous model of governance from single-party rule to a coalition where Modi is the first among NDA equals. The decisions and actions of the Modi government in the past few weeks indicate the cat metaphor has mutated: continuity has eclipsed change.
The council of ministers has changed colour for sure. Yet the contours, constitution, thrust and trajectory of India’s strategic, economic and diplomatic kinetics reflect continuity rather than major modulation. Even if the politics of the Congress was defeated thrice, its style of economics and diplomacy finds place of pride even in the new dispensation. The economists owing allegiance and fame to the Nehruvian regime have been given more prominence than they got during the previous governments. For example, last week, when the PM announced the reconstitution of the NITI Ayog, it exemplified continuity of the administrative thought process. All of its five full-time members were retained—vice chairman Suman Bery, Vijay Kumar Saraswat, Arvind Virmani, Ramesh Chand and Dr V K Paul.
BJP politicians have an upper age limit of 75 years, but it doesn't apply to the NITI Aayog phalanx. The vice chairman enjoys a cabinet minister’s status and the rest are at the minister of state level. A couple of new Union ministers were added as members and special invitees to assuage coalition compulsions, but the core team remained. Bery, Virmani and Saraswat have celebrated their platinum birth anniversaries. Barring Ramesh Chand and Paul, the rest were associated with the UPA regime and were directly and indirectly connected with internal organisations and the defence establishment.
Bery fits the typical elitist multinational meritocratic mould produced by the Congress ethos, starting his career at the World Bank. He was a consultant to the Reserve Bank of India and a member of the Economic Advisory Council under PM Manmohan Singh. He was associated with energy company Shell and worked as a fellow at the Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel, whose members include Accenture, Apple, Facebook, Google, HSBC, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Huawei and Amazon. Virmani, another economic whizkid whose ideology is his career, served under Congress governments and is an IMF maven. He was once the chief economic advisor to the UPA regime.
Saraswat, considered an eminent scientist, was also a secretary in the UPA government and a DRDO honcho, in a post once held by A P J Abdul Kalam. Controversies dogged his tenure. In 2012, the UPA imposed certain restrictions on his financial powers after an internal audit and scrutiny by the auditor general red-flagged some of his decisions. Though he was denied an extension, a year later, the same Manmohan Singh government awarded him a Padma Bhushan. Even B V R Subrahmanyam, a former IAS officer who served as private secretary to Manmohan Sigh, has been retained as CEO.
Schrödinger stands vindicated because soon after the BJP came to power in 2014, he was inducted as a member of the newly-created NITI Aayog. Dr Paul and Chand didn’t have such luck with the UPA. Dr Paul headed the department of paediatrics at AIIMS for nearly a decade. But he wasn’t crowned with the laurel wreath of directorship for unknown reasons. Good luck came in the form of the BJP sarkar: he was appointed a NITI Aayog member in August 2017 to oversee the health, nutrition and human resource verticals. He is now around 70 years old. Chand, the youngest member, has a PhD in agricultural economics and monitors the agricultural sector.
But change is in the stars, indicating how the NITI Aayog will think and deliver. As a member of its governing council, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu will be a game-changer. So far, the council has met less than a dozen times over the past decade. Naidu, like Modi, is a man of ideas and thinks big. Advised by domain experts, he is likely to present alternative development growth models that would accelerate real development in the states with enhanced private participation. He wouldn’t let babus and young foreign-trained professionals dictate the narrative. His neighbour in power, Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, is raring to participate in his first meeting of the council. He, along with the two other Congress CMs, will push for significant alterations in the current supply-side policies of the NDA government.
Apart from at NITI Aayog, Modi has chosen continuity over change in key positions in his office and diplomatic assignments, too. His principal secretary P K Mishra and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, both over 75 years old, will stay put, having set the record of any civil servant or advisor staying beyond a decade in the same office. Both have been spectacularly efficacious in implementing Modi’s policies. During their earlier stints in various capacities, the Double Doyens showed effective administration skills using innovative strategies. Both enjoy a Union cabinet rank. While allocating portfolios to his ministers, too, the PM has preferred continuity over change in sensitive ministries such as finance, home, defence, external affairs and infrastructure. All incumbents will break the record for staying in the same chair continuously for more than five years.
Sticking to the continuity clause in diplomacy, Modi chose the outgoing Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra as India’s 29th ambassador to the US. For the first time in South Block’s history, the ministry of external affairs is headed by a former foreign secretary who was the Indian ambassador to both China and US for six years. Previously, experienced, senior political leaders were India’s foreign ministers, high commissioners to Britain or ambassadors to the US. The deviation happened in the past two decades when successive prime ministers opted for Indian service officers to lead missions in both the key countries. Kwatra is the 10th IFS officer to be appointed ambassador in a row. Of the 29 ambassadors to the US, 10 were from the IFS, three from the IAS and four from the elite Indian civil service founded by the British. For the UK, the last 14 high commissioners were drawn from the foreign service; of the 29 high commissioners since independence, half were from the IFS, while the IAS had just one.
The reshuffle of the bureaucracy, appointment of new advisors and restructuring of various academic, scientific and economic institutions are a work in progress. One thing is abundantly clear: electoral verdicts may alter ideological affiliations, but continuity of bureaucratic supremacy will retain its vice-like grip over policy formulations. Gauging from the ideological and institutional profiles of the talent chosen so far, and likely future picks, continuity is the Modi mantra. The minimal change is the exception that proves the rule. The rest have no choice but to be content with the quantum of solace.
Prabhu Chawla
prabhuchawla@newindianexpress.com
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