All Sound and Fury Signifying Something

                                                                     All Sound and Fury Signifying Something

                 There is a Tamil proverb –which rhymes well, though in English translation it loses that internal rhyme. The Tamil proverb says that it makes no difference if you place goat in cow’s place and cow in goat’s place, where goat and cow in Tamil rhyme as ‘adu’ and ‘madu’. The recent cabinet reshuffle is just like that. Take one from HRD, take another from Environment, a third from Telecom, a fourth from  Finance etc and exchange their places by making permutations  and combinations  and then to spice up the possible gains of the reshuffle add a few more from different castes, different religions,  different States , especially those going to poles and you arrive at a new composition. Good sense says that it is but proper to wait to see the results of this reshuffle, but looking at the cut and paste portfolios of the Ministers, one may not be far off the mark to predict a not too noteworthy outcome from this exercise, aimed at giving a new look the cabinet. If there are any obvious gains that one can detect straightaway, they accrue to the PM and to no one else. Headlines on News channels and newspapers claim that the PM has got his majo back with the reshuffle.  It is true as there has been a sagging optimism among the people that Modi will live to his pre poll promises and the PM cleverly used this opportunity to lift the gloom, albeit paradoxically by cocking a snook at those impossible promises. The Modi acolytes, seeking to avert a possible negative fall- out that performance of the Modi government did not measure up to the expectations of the people and  contrarily gave the perception that the government was anti -poor, anti- dalits and anti- youth, started singing paeans of praise to the PM  for his assertiveness and courage to show the door to non- achievers.

In Modi’s rule, Modi is the King and the King can do no wrong. If Smriti had acted on the diktats of RSS and had thereby alienated the Dalits due to the Vemula-Kanhaiya controversies, she could not have acted without the knowledge and secret assent of the PM.  Smriti has been more than useful for the PM. She has been a willing fall guy(fall girl) because the PM should not be blamed for the Hyderabad and JNU episodes that alienated the university students. She has proved useful to take the blame as a bad cop while protecting the PM as a good cop. PM’s good cop-bad cop strategy has been played out any number of times in the last two years by the oxymoronic combination of his  silence and eloquence. His deafening silence when all his men and women raved and ranted and his studied eloquence  with a gentle rap on their knuckles without a personal attack(which he always saves for his opponents, in particular the Congress and the Gandhi family) and his statesman- like advice to maintain  harmony and peace among conflicting groups  have been intentional to give himself the good cop tag.  Smriti had also to pay for her aggression and belligerence, for her arrogance and overbearing attitude and her supercilious disdain of academics and scholars, which, inter alia gave her more headlines in the media than the PM. She had to go but the PM did not want to let go of her usefulness. So the clumsy exercise of shifting ministers was carried out with great dexterity and skill. Smriti is, both in the literal and metaphorical sense, not a light push over.  Her arrogance is lethal; her oratory is fiery; her presence is weighty. She would have to be used, as strategized by Modi, as a forceful face in the UP elections.  PM offered her a rattle by giving textiles in exchange for HRD. The PM has once again showed that he is a clever Human Resource Professional. In the PM’s reckoning, anyone who opens his mouth wide to show himself/herself to be too clever by half and not wait for his mann ki batt which is his sole prerogative, has to go.  Jayant Sinha, the IIT, Harvard graduate and a venture capitalist with ample knowledge of finance had to go for talking out of turn. He held views on economic policies  that were not in line with the governments, but the spin that has been slyly spread is that his wife is a senior banker and it was the conflict of interest that landed him down  in the aviation block from the privileged, high flying position as junior minister in the Finance ministry. He also had to pay for the sins of his father who had been highly critical of the economic and foreign policies of the Modi Government. Accommodation of new faces on the basis of their caste and religion shows that every move is a strategic move to win the forthcoming elections. The five who have been shown the door are not likely to create a flutter and they won’t matter even if they mewed, but they are handy for the PM to emerge  as a leader who takes  strong, decisive  and unpalatable decisions.  It is said that Modi’s regime is a hark back to that of his bête noire Indira Gandhi, who was regarded as the one Man cabinet in her times.  Modi  has An Amit Shah with him just as Indira had her son Sanjay to dominate and lord over all other minions.

To the media, it is once again a bonus to debate the ins and outs with reference to individuals while all the PM’s men act as spin doctors to hail him as the protector, preserver and caregiver  of the dalits and  the downtrodden as well as the presiding deity of the Corporates and big businessmen not to leave out the NRIs. The PM is revered as the Lord Shiva who opens his third eye when he is angry and burns the sinners and the wrong doers.  I recall the nervous speech of King Richard II who admits to the popularity of his cousin Bolingbroke , who later deposed the King and became King Henry IV. Richard’s words have a close parallel to the present 8ncrowned monarch of India:

Observed his courtship to the common people;
How he did seem to dive into their hearts
With humble and familiar courtesy,
What reverence he did throw away on slaves,
Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles
And patient underbearing of his fortune,
As 'twere to banish their affects with him.
Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench;
A brace of draymen bid God speed him well
And had the tribute of his supple knee,
With 'Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends;'
As were our England in reversion his,
And he our subjects' next degree in hope.

With the opposition in tatters, with Congress holding to the thin apron strings of the mother and the crumbled shirttail of the son, who can better fit the 7 Racecourse Road than our present PM?  His globe trotting exercise is meant to give him a world statesman halo. Who knows if his present visit to Durban to board the ‘same’ train as his Great Gujarat predecessor did and became a Mahatma will be a repeat feat nearly a hundred years later to give him the title Maha Modi!. All sound and fury in his case do signify something.