Polish the cabinet

Everybody recognises that the mandate for the UPA is a good reason to do some overdue house-cleaning. The government may believe that it has been rewarded for its performance,but that belief should not slide into complacency. The primary lesson of this election is that the Indian electorate expects its government to aid its aspirations; and for that,in a time of recession,the government needs to keep the engine of the economy going,and it needs the big,nuts-and-bolts ministries to perform. Naturally,there should be an efficient home minister,and a confidence-inspiring finance minister; but the mandate for good governance doesnt stop there. It extends throughout the cabinet,and especially to ministries such as telecommunications,power,surface transport and the like ministries where money is pouring in,and now more than ever,results must pour out.

After the UPAs last victory in 2004,much effort in the first hundred days was devoted to mapping out a plan to ensure that the rural economy recovered some resilience. That may have worked. That energy now must go into ensuring that the infrastructure that bottlenecks Indias efforts to lift millions out of poverty is updated. Post-2004,the Congress might have felt its hands were tied by dependence on its allies in the UPA,and that some of the most crucial ministries had to be handed over to them,to be treated essentially as ATMs. A problem that exists when the Congress is at 145 in the Lok Sabha doesnt exist when it has crossed 200. The Congress must not let its allies hold recovery to ransom.

Of course,that isnt to say that it is only the allies who didnt

deliver. Some ministries that were run by Congress stalwarts were among the most underperforming. The human resources development ministry is the most obvious example,of course. But the power ministry is another. These are crucial days for small and medium enterprises struggling to both survive and reconfigure their costs to meet the demands of changing world demand. The government should recognise that allowing their power supply to fall short by hours every day is in its own way an iniquitous tax. The PMs hands have been strengthened by this mandate. He needs to use his political capital to whip under-performing,crucial ministries into line.