Introduction
The Modi Government recently has undergone a cabinet change, India's 22nd Cabinet Shuffle. While its speculated to have occurred as an effort for greater representation, many believe it is nothing more than an effort to appease the public with what is on the table, a much better representation of the Indian democracy. With 12 high profile resignations, and an increase in educated professionals, this new cabinet is filled with unexpected and controversial changes. Firstly, let's learn what a cabinet shuffle actually is.
What is a cabinet reshuffle
First things first, what is a cabinet reshuffle? Think of it in this way, suppose you are the King in a game of chess and you command chess pieces, pieces such as the rook, the knight, the queen and the bishop are significantly more important than pawns, sometimes pawns are promoted to high point pieces and sometimes higher pieces are sacked in exchange for better positions.
In the context of the cabinet, these point pieces head something known as ministries, these ministries help the state function better by doing jobs allotted to them, for example maybe the queen looks into your internal security and heads the home ministry, she’s very powerful and can reach everywhere. Maybe one knight heads the finance ministry looking into matters of the economy, although it has interesting movement, it gets the job done. Maybe one bishop heads the education ministry; it can only move restrictedly but still commands respect. All these pieces are specialised units and can perform better than pawns, these are your ministers.
Sometimes these pieces are sacked, or maybe pawns take up their place, battle-hardened and ready to face new challenges; they're a welcome sight for a sore eye. Why are these pieces sacked one may ask, well maybe they aren’t viable any longer, maybe they’re underperforming, maybe you need to distract the public with some supposedly big change, maybe they’ve lost your trust, whatever the reason may be as Prime Minister you can at a given time change your cabinet.
Prominent changes (creation of new ministry and new ministers)
Just as explained the Modi Government has recently decided to switch around some of its high point pieces 12 to be exact; in favour of newer shiner high point pieces, and also to everyone’s surprise created an extra spot for a high point piece to lead, that is the ministry of cooperation, which aims to help the co-op movement in India, let’s take a look at these changes.
12 ministers from the Modi Cabinet have resigned, these include heavyweights such as:
Dr. Harsh Vardhan who headed the Health Ministry and also made guest appearances at Baba Ramdev’s magic drug Coronil’s event which claimed to be “first evidence-based medicine for coronavirus”.
Nishank Pokhariyal who headed the Education Ministry, the same man who claimed that there was no need for science because we have the wonderful gift of astrology in the Lok Sabha.
Prakash Javadekar went through the controversial EIA 2020, during which dissenting sites were “erroneously” sent notices under the anti-terror Unlawful Activities Prevention Act.
Piyush Goyal nearly monopolised all internet discussions for a while with his statements on how maths didn’t help Einstein discover gravity. If you can’t spot the mistake, one, maths very much did help Einstein with his work on general relativity and two it was Sir Issac Newton who discovered gravity.
Talking about the newcomers a lot of people are excited about Ashwini Vaishnav who is taking over as the Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology Vaishnav was also Atal Bihar Vajpayee’s private secretary.
The new health minister is Mansukh Mandaviya who will have to work day and night against the very much coming third wave, to ensure that no misery befalls the people or at the very least ensure that it’s not too much to change public opinion. Mandaviya will also have to ensure that the Central Government is ready for the crisis, to do real work and not just pass the buck around and do “tu tu mein mein” with the states while the people suffer.
The new Education Minister is Dharmendra Pradhan, it will be Pradhan’s duty to carry forth and ensure the success of the much-hyped New Education Policy, to ensure that it helps each child, educator and stakeholder. Will ujjwala man be able to light up a new environment to facilitate better learning or will it fall flat on its face? Only time can tell.
Of Course, we don’t have enough time to go over all the people who resigned however we will provide a list of the new ministers here: List of Ministers
What is this going to achieve?
The new cabinet is mostly full of well-educated people, newcomers with great ambition, seasoned veterans who have played the game of power for decades and people who have been in the shadows for far too long, the question now remains what will this cabinet reshuffle achieve? What was its aim?
Well just like most questions in politics depending on who you ask the answer changes, some people say it's because the old ministers were underperforming and lost the faith of the Prime Minister. Some write this off by citing a rather underperforming ministry that hasn't changed and call it nothing but a distraction. Some say it's for the upcoming UP elections for consolidating votes while some say it’s a masterstroke and refuse to elaborate further, we guess only time will tell.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our short explainer on a few prominent figures in the new and old Modi Cabinet. Just before you go off to do what you were about to here are a few quick stats about the new and shiny Modi Cabinet:
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