Modi playing with fire

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will do well to take note of what American hero and Navy admiral Hyman G. Rickover had said decades ago when he extolled the powers of the bureaucracy by saying that God may forgive for some harm done but bureaucracy does not.
Rickover may not be far off the mark in the Indian context. Modi has been shuffling top echelons of bureaucracy like a pack of cards. His latest controversial move came on Aug. 31 when he appointed Rajiv Mehrishi as the new home secretary with a two-year fixed tenure, hours ahead of his retirement. Mehrishi was the top boss of another key ministry — finance — as the union finance secretary, the only bureaucrat in recent times to head the bureaucracy of two most powerful ministries, finance and home.
Mehrishi replaced L.C. Goyal, who still had 17 months left in his two-year tenure. Since the Modi government took charge 15 months ago, Mehrishi is the third home secretary. This puts in perspective the scant regard Modi has for the bureaucracy. Perhaps Modi has taken the 19th century French novelist Honore de Balzac’s quotable quote too seriously: “Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.”
The Indian bureaucracy had a déjà vu with the Mehrishi episode. Exactly seven months ago, the Modi government had resorted to similar tactic vis-à-vis another top-notch bureaucrat when the then Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh was unceremoniously shown the door to accommodate the current incumbent S. Jaishankar.
Singh, daughter of former Intelligence Bureau chief T.V. Rajeswar, had seven months’ tenure still left. However, Modi was very keen to bring in his favorite Jaishankar, then ambassador to the US, a couple of days before his retirement. According to convention, retired officials are not appointed on key posts like secretaries of top ministries.
In January this year, the Modi government had sacked Avinash Chander as chief of Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), 15 months before his tenure was to end.
The Modi government had meted out a similar shabby treatment to another top bureaucrat Arvind Mayaram in October last year when he was first unceremoniously shunted out of the powerful post of finance secretary and then transferred twice within a fortnight. Mayaram was appointed finance secretary by P. Chidambaram, finance minister in the previous government led by Manmohan Singh.
There is no doubt that it is the prerogative of any prime minister to have his own team of bureaucrats. L.C. Goyal was not the only bureaucrat to have been removed. He was among 16 key officials shunted out. One of the primary reasons of the latest bureaucratic reshuffle was that Modi wants to have his own team for preparing next year’s budget, which is now less than six months away.
But the manner in which top bureaucrats are being shuffled has brought in a sense of disquiet in the bureaucracy. It suggests that the prime minister wants only yes men to head key ministries and personal loyalty takes precedence over merits.
This is a dangerous trend. Modi is playing with fire. Everyone knows that the prime minister and the ministers cannot function without the bureaucracy and it is the bureaucrats who run the government.
The Goyal episode is a case in point. He was given marching orders on several counts. Three reasons are doing the rounds: (i) he did not pass on to the Prime Minister’s Office an Intelligence Bureau (IB) report on Hardik Patel’s mega rally in Modi’s home state Gujarat, which was attended by well over half a million people and established the 22-year-old young man as the latest Modi-baiter; (ii) he demanded to know details of the Naga peace accord driven solely by the PMO with the home ministry being in complete dark; and (iii) he refused to take action on NGOs run by another Modi-baiter Teesta Setelwad and chose to go by the rule book without showing any hurry.
The unrest in bureaucratic circles is expectedly being lapped by the Congress party, which sees in it as yet another opportunity to score brownie points over Modi. On Aug. 31, Congress leader and former Union Minister Anand Sharma launched a frontal assault on Modi saying that the prime minister had centralized power and his functioning was anti-democratic wherein Modi is supreme and his Cabinet ministers matter little or nothing. He charged, perhaps rightly, that the 16 bureaucrats who were removed were given marching orders without their ministers concerned being consulted.
Modi will have to tread cautiously here on, now that he has already completed one-fourth of his term. The Q1 GDP growth results are disappointing and the latest official figures suggest that the Indian growth has slackened.
Modi came to power with his much-hyped promise of “acchhe din” (good days). He cannot deliver by alienating the bureaucracy. Even the armed services personnel are getting disenchanted as the Modi government drags its feet on their long-standing demand of One Rank One Pension. Time is fast running out for Modi.