There has been little resistance to his style of governance both within the ruling alliance and within his own party the BJP. Perceptions are that he will complete this term and might even seek a fourth term. In this context, speculations are rife in the national capital about the form a cabinet reshuffle would take. New faces are bound to come in and Bihar strongman Nitish Kumar, who stepped down from the long-serving CM post and moved to Rajya Sabha, would be accommodated in some top slot. He's likely eyeing the Railway Ministry, which he handled in the past and which currently lacks a full-time minister. Curiously, Ashwini Vaishnav who handles this department has also been saddled with another important ministry: the money-spinning Information Technology. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, it requires a full-time minister. So too with the Railways that criss-crosses states. The Prime Minister has not done justice to both these major segments by entrusting them to one minister. Vaishnav, a Western-educated bureaucrat-turned-minister, has his good qualities but obviously has limitations regarding focused attention.
Notably, another senior figure in the Modi dispensation is S Jaishankar, drawn from the Foreign Service into the political process and handling the External Affairs Ministry. That he has not been saddled with other responsibilities is a saving grace. The likes of Amit Shah, who handles internal security and oversees party affairs from behind, or Rajnath Singh who heads the Defence Ministry, are among the Modi government's principal strengths, as are Roads Minister Nitin Gadkari, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Agriculture Minister Shivar Singh Chouhan. These apart, few among the central ministers are in public reckoning. Dharmendra Pradhan as Education Minister, has found himself in a mess. How nation-building will be carried forward with a team of less-inspiring figures with questionable administrative acumen and perceived lack of vision is a big question. This, however, is linked to the larger question of whether the BJP on its own has sufficient talent with administrative heft and a world vision. Born in the early 1990s as a remodelled version of the Jan Sangh, the BJP is a relatively new party. The Congress, as the grand old party, retained a wealth of talent as had been proven in the past governments. Yet, it zeroed in on Manmohan Singh for the post of Finance Minister-obviously a pick by scholarly PM P.V. Narasimha Rao-in the early 1990s. This helped the nation redraft its economic policy and agenda for the future. Both Rao and Pranab Mukherjee were academicians of high repute. They were held in high esteem. Today, even the Rajya Sabha, through which non-political individuals who proved their worth in various fields were drawn into the governance process, is getting shallower and shallower. The governance process in the world's largest democracy, thereby, suffers from a lack of enlightened minds.