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KV Prasad
Occupying the most important political post of the country on the Raisina Hill in Lutyens Delhi — the office of the Prime Minister since May 26, 2014 — Narendra Modi is both respected and feared. Respected for the efficacious manner of working and feared for the sheer capacity to keep an eagle eye on his team.
Day after day, for the past nearly 365 days, PM Modi by his own admission did not take leave. He is a workaholic whose hours in office stretch almost 12 hours a day and he carries on working later from the residence. It is continuous work by a person who assured the people during the campaign of preferring to be a “Pradhan Sevak” rather than being a “Pradhan Mantri” with zero tolerance towards corruption.
Barring Rajiv Gandhi, who took vacation like the US President does each year, long hours and no-leave work is true even for Prime Ministers in the past. PM Modi’s predecessor Manmohan Singh too worked regularly either from his South Block office or from the official residence at 7, Race Course Road; the only difference now is that most officials in the PMO and some key ministries get little or no down time.
As for the working style, what has changed is that the person at the top prefers to get a crisp note and briefing on complex issues rather than the practice of the immediate past PM to go through the files at times. Remember, Manmohan Singh spent his lifetime working in the sarkari quagmire, wading through ubiquitous notes untying and tying files, files and more files.
Power-point presentation is the new mantra for bureaucrats on issues on which the PM or PMO wants an update. And what keeps the bureaucrats and the officialdom on its toes is the systematic follow-up on the decisions taken. The effort is to remove the bottlenecks and hurdles en route.
In the Cabinet meetings where decisions are taken, the discussion is limited to a few ministers besides the person whose ministry is associated with the move. On ticklish issues requiring inter-ministerial consultations, the ministers concerned are asked to work together to ensure that decisions are not stalled for lack of or less than anticipated coordination. The practice of Group of Ministers (GoM) or empowered GoM may be passé, but informal groupings is the new way of doing things.
Only a handful of ministers, who have unhindered access to the Prime Minister, have been more effective in getting their proposals through while in a majority of cases, the final call is taken by the PM/PMO, leading to a growing feeling of greater concentration of power and centralised decision-making.
The thinking is also reflected in the PM’s own statement that after assuming office, he realised the government worked in different silos and not as a cohesive unit. The building blocks are to ensure that the Modi Sarkar implements policies that further the Prime Minister’s maxim of “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance”.
As someone privy to decision-making in the corridors of power mentions, the PM is a keen listener and would give a patient hearing in understanding the issue, asking a few questions in the process. Once he makes up his mind, there is no going back and even if the original proposer wants to offer a revised opinion, the option is closed.
The prime focus is to revive and kick-start the sluggish economy with a revival of investor confidence, creating infrastructure and generating jobs through the ambitious “Make in India” programme. The BJP-led NDA may have won the majority but much to the chagrin of its leaders, the ruling coalition realised that “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” would require more effort to build bridges with those in the Opposition.
Then there have been murmurs of a newer version of ‘policy paralysis’, what with appointments to various organisations remaining to be filled. In some cases, routine bureaucratic postings have not gone through for one reason or the other.
A veteran BJP watcher who worked closely with the previous regime observed that even after a year, many posts remain vacant, stating that the Congress would never have allowed such a situation to build and put party loyalists in offices, something akin to the “spoils of office” in American political parlance.
On the other hand, during the last one year, a noteworthy chapter is the successful pursuit of foreign policy. PM Modi literally began with a bang by announcing his arrival on the world stage by inviting the leaders of SAARC nations.
Excepting the ‘now-on, now-off’ confusion over Pakistan, the PM has opened new vistas, extending the sphere of influence from the neighbourhood to East Asia and the Pacific and engagement with world powers like the United States and China besides European countries.
Narendra Modi is a hands-on Prime Minister who prefers to stand tall among his team.
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