Ladies first is the mantra in Narendra Modi’s one-month-old government. All the women ministers—External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, HRD Minister Smriti Irani, Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti, Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi and Minister for Minority Affairs Najma Heptullah—have hit the ground running, taking rapid decisions, demanding immediate results and setting deadlines for goals to be achieved by their ministers. Modi has broken the glass ceiling on behalf of his lady ministers: for the first time, women are in charge of powerful ministries such as External Affairs, Commerce and Human Resource Development, hitherto a prerogative of men. The BJP, which has 282 MPs in the Lok Sabha, has 30 out of total 61 women MPs.
The hushed environment of South Block, with its vaulted ceilings and sandstone corridors, has been energised by Sushma Swaraj. Called the Hillary Clinton to Modi’s Obama, mandarins call Sushma the only political heavyweight to head the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) since Pranab Mukherjee. Her first month in MEA itself has been plagued by crises, from Sri Lanka to Iraq. Recently, when MEA set up a control room to provide information on Iraq to relatives of Indians working in the strife-torn country, the phones immediately started ringing. Babus manning the desk were taken aback to receive a call on the hotline, not from a relative but from their minister who was making a test call from home to check how efficiently matters were being handled. “It led to more fine-tuning of the control room process, including finding the right persons to man the phones,” says an MEA official. Sushma’s daily schedule is chock-a-block with meetings. She has been on the ball on the issue, meeting the PM during the Iraq Crisis Meeting held recently. Being a grassroots leader, she is aware of the importance of the human touch. Her initiative to meet with the families of the kidnapped Indians showcased the human side of the ministry.
“She is interested in areas where the public has to deal with the ministry, such as passports, Mansarovar and Haj tours, and issues at Indian embassies,” says an MEA official.
The 62-year-old BJP veteran adopted her PM’s gruelling pace on the first day of the government itself, by interfacing with the eight SAARC foreign leaders and the Mauritius PM who attended the swearing-in ceremony. She followed it up the next day with back-to-back bilateral meetings. She walked into her office in South Black the next day after 9 am—her usual starting time, and began work immediately, receiving extensive briefings from various heads of desks and Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh. Early last week was spent meeting Indian envoys of neighbouring countries and understanding issues. After the meeting, senior IFS officers were impressed by her ‘sharp’ understanding and quick grasp of issues.
Sushma also had to de-escalate the perennial Tamil fishermen issue, which again flared up when Sri Lanka arrested more Indian fishermen. Meanwhile, she had to deal with visiting Omani and Chinese counterparts Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah and Wang Yi respectively as well as the Russian deputy foreign minister Dmitry O Rogozin. Her attention to detail and her sharp memory was apparent when she welcomed them and also said goodbye in their language. Hence, when Sushma meets French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Monday, he is likely to be welcomed with a ‘bon jour’. She visited Bangladesh late last week to assure Sheikh Hasina of continued cooperation; her success was evident in the body language when both leaders strolled hand-in-hand before their official meetings in Dhaka. Being the party in charge of Andhra Pradesh as well, she met MPs from Andhra and Telangana on matters concerning overseas Indians.
Sushma ensures that her PM’s vision is being implemented fast, from prioritising neighbourhood concerns to his instructions on maintaining a clean office environment. South Block is already looking more spic-and-span than usual.