Bloated Cabinet and Council of Ministers have been a bane for a long time now. The blame was put squarely on the coalition politics where numerous stakeholders had to be accommodated. To do this, many ministries were segmented, again segmented and finally fragmented. This resulted in the country having no coherent unified policy pertaining to certain vital sectors. There is another flip side to this. Each ministry means a Cabinet minister, a minister of state, secretaries, under secretaries ........................ office assistants, drivers, bloating up non plan expenditure while not serving the interest of the public in any manner. One thought that with Congress having a reasonable number of MPs in the Parliament, the PM (or Super PM) would do something to integrate many of these ministries, but to no avail.
The nation needs an integrated approach to development. What we do not want is Ministers putting a spoke on policies that has an impact on the concerned sector.
Let us look at some classic cases. One would have thought that Transport, whether it be through air, water, rail or road should be under one umbrella. No way. We have a Railway Minister, a Road transport minister, a Shipping minister, and a Civil aviation minister. Forget about any improvement in freight or passenger traffic facilities. Let us thank god that there is no pedestrial footpath minister. (On this, I cannot for the life of me understand why the hell should we have a Railway Budget at all, presented to the Parliament. By the same token we should have a Civil Aviation budge, road transport budget etc.)
The most critical stumbling block in India's economic growth is Energy security. But the situation is laughable. We have a Power Minister, a Coal Minister, Petroleum Minister, Non conventional and renewable energy Minister and apart from this the Atomic Energy comes under the PM. When Farook Abdulla was given Cabinet Rank for non conventional and renewable energy Ministry, people in Kashmir made fun of him saying he has been given the ministry for Gober Gas. It would be funny but for the fact that it is such a sorry state of affairs. The collective effort of all these ministers is reflected in the end result. A good part of India is without power and the 6-8 hours power cut, even in national capital, is a norm rather than an exception. Industries are using petroleum based captive gensets to facilitate uninterrupted production which results in higher cost of inputs, making our products non competitive in the global markets. But hey! who cares? As long as the ministers and babus have their feifdom, it is fine.
We have an Urban Development Minister and another Minister for Urban Poverty Alleviation. What does the latter do? Clean the slums? And what does the former do? Seal unauthorised constructions. Is it any wonder that our Urban infrastructure is bursting in seams?
With Industrialization a key focus area for the economic growth, one would have thought some sense would go into this critical sector. No way. We have a Commerce and Industries Minister, a Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, a Minister for Steel, another for Textiles, one more for Food Processing, yet another for Chemicals and Fertilizers, and finally one for Micro, Small & Medium Industries. Whew!! It is a miracle the manufacturing sector is growing at all. It will take an industrialist 2 years to figure out which ministry does his unit belongs to.
I stopped analysing the portfolios at this stage as it is mind boggling.
