19 signals

Crises are revelatory. Manmohan Singh’s cabinet,truncated in its first outing after a midnight scuffle with the DMK,makes assertions that it may not have,had ministry formation gone smoothly. It does,first,signal that the second UPA government is configured very differently from the first. The DMK’s blackmail tactics now are akin to those employed in 2004. The ability of the Congress this time to resist the threat shows the political stability its mandate carries. But Dr Singh’s group of 19 also sets up the new council of ministers,reportedly to be expanded early next week,to some stringent rules for inclusion. The promise in the group of 19 now cannot be dashed by the dozens who will complement them soon after.

This group of 19 is interesting as much for those who are absent as for those included. It is no surprise that the average age is high,given that they are all of cabinet rank. So far there is little reason to fear that they will not be balanced with a more diverse,fresher band of ministers of state. But with the exclusion of some prominent ministers who weighed down the first UPA government by inefficiency,political mischief and even outright misdemeanour,Dr Singh and the Congress have bound themselves to standards,standards which will now be breached with high political costs. The gloss given to the mini-cabinet with the exclusion of Arjun Singh,H.R. Bharadwaj,T.R. Baalu and A. Raja must not be diminished on Tuesday. This newspaper published a well-considered Ministermeter this week; these ministers score abominably. There is little reason to believe that the prime minister,or his party,has come to significantly divergent assessments. The Congress was slow to acknowledge the political costs in persisting with Shivraj Patil as home minister. That acknowledgement,when it did come post-26/11,nonetheless,resonated with voters. It’s a political lesson that should be carried to other portfolios,not least among them the infrastructure ministries that languished for five years under distracted incumbents.

Among those ministries was shipping,road transport and highways under Baalu. In a coalition,that too with allies as

demanding as the DMK has proven itself to be,the prime minister will have limited scope for holding non-Congress ministers accountable. But having weathered for now the DMK’s threats,Dr Singh must raise the bar since his first term. His new mandate gives him the comfort of greater numbers,and also the burden of greater expectations.