Whittle down this jumbo

Everyone gets excited about ministerial reshuffles but rarely do we reflect on whether we need the jumbo-sized ministries that we increasingly get in state after state — and now at the Centre, too. More importantly, the question is not often posed whether we, in fact, need many of the ministries that we have. The Sarkaria Commission had categorically specified that the size of the council of ministers should never exceed ten per cent of the size of the legislature. This means the Union council of ministers should have no more than 55 ministers. The Atal Behari Vajpayee ministry is a bulky 70-plus and should be pared down. There are many ministries that should simply not exist. There are many others that can easily be merged. Why does the Union government need a ministry for civil aviation? Or for tourism? Or for information technology? Or culture? Do we need a minister for youth affairs and sports, two ministers for textiles, a minister for shipping, and so on and so forth? What do they do? Most ministers of state complain they have no work.

If an Arun Jaitley or Arun Shourie can handle three ministries, if a Jaswant Singh can handle more and more subjects, then why have mini-ministries in the first place? Why should there be a monstrosity called the ministry of human resource development, where everything from astrology to astronomy is under the control of one political boss, whose officials either routinely badger heads of some of our best academic institutions or never find time for them? The time has come for a serious re-examination of both the size and composition of the Union council of ministers. Not only do we not need so many ministers and the paraphernalia that goes with them, we do not need so many ministries and needless governmental interference in the normal functioning of markets and the institutions they foster.

The argument that coalitions tend to bloat ministries because every small constituent wants a ministry is not entirely correct in explaining the size and composition of the Vajpayee government. In fact, some of the most important coalition partners like the Telugu Desam Party and the Trinamool Congress are not even represented in the Union council. On the other hand, the BJP has secured for itself an over-representation, applying the Sarkaria principle of 10 per cent. Not only is the BJP over-represented, its regional composition is lopsided with too many ministers from the northern states, especially Bihar, and too few from the south and the east. It is time the prime minister studied this problem and, more importantly, decide whether he needs so many superfluous ministries. In some states more than half the members of the ruling party in the legislature are either ministers or have ministerial rank. This corpulence is not going to help in speeding up decision-making, it only creates wasteful file work and expenditure. The process must be reversed.