Rendezvous with PM's Cabinet

July 12,2011 would be marked as a red letter day in the history of PM Cabinet reshuffle in India. The Govt and our respected PM wanted to undertake this reshuffle to counter the tarred image of the Govt due to numerous scams that have been unearthed recently by the likes of CAG as well as other respected Govt agencies(at least they still have an ethical piece alive in their soul). It was also a day for our PM to prove that he is not a puppet in the hand of the ruling party chief.

After the reshuffle, the only thing that comes to my mind is "What a Waste"! The purpose of this reshuffle was lost perhaps in the various meetings that the NDA Govt had with its allies, threatening to withdraw their support if they weren't given representation in the Cabinet. Well, thankfully the DMK didn't have much muscle power this time to ask the Congress to include some of its highly corrupt party members to be included in the Cabinet, after Karunanidhi suffered from a triple whammy - A. Raja, Dayanidhi Maran and Kanimozhi. The Cabinet seems to be greatly inspired from Einstein's Mass Energy equivalence (E = mc^2) and has adapted it in a different context. The portfolio of a minster can get changed from one form to another, making the total number of ministers almost a constant.

The people of India are dying to see younger people in the cabinet, when today the average age of Cabinet is equal to almost 64 years. The cabinet needs relatively younger people who are dynamic, open to newer ideas and much more flexible. This kind of a change would surely be taken positively by the foreign investors, thereby increasing the confidence of the FII and FDI investors in the Indian economy -  a much needed thing at this point of time when the foreign investors are shying away from investing in India due to the untamed inflation.

Last but not the least, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, who earlier held the Environment Ministry, has now been "promoted" to Rural Development. I really don't know how much of a good news it is for the Indian environment. He is the leader who changed the perception of the environment ministry from a rubber stamp to  something more serious in nature. I believe he did so well because his heart was into the cause of saving the depleting Environment, and he didn't treat it as just another portfolio. But alas! It seems the lobbying of the MNCs and industrialists - whose projects have been stalled due to clearance issues from the Ministry - has finally worked.

Now, it is upto Jayanthi Natarajan, the new MoS for Environment, to either uphold the standards set by his predecessor Mr. Jairam Ramesh or succumb to the pressures of the big MNCs and industrialists.