The weakness of the Modi government is too many important portfolios is too few hands. A start should be made by divesting Arun Jaitley of the defence ministry, followed up by a full-fledged cabinet expansion

If Narendra Modi’s government has an Achilles’ Heel, it is his weak bench strength in terms of potential ministers and the resultant overloading of some ministers.

While I would give Modi fairly high marks for trying out a lot of new ministers in order to create new ministerial talent – it makes no sense to use only old hands, for new brooms do sometimes sweep cleaner – the real bottleneck in his government is the concentration of key ministries in a few hands. A small ministry is fine, but overloading some ministers with too many important portfolios can’t be good for efficiency, when the issues they have to handle are complex.

The senior level talent boils down to just six or seven people, including Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Nitin Gadkari, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Venkaiah Naidu; Maneka Gandhi, Piyush Goyal, Nirmala Sitharaman, and Sadananda Gowda bring up the middle level for talent; Uma Bharati, Smriti Irani and Harsh Vardhan are as yet unproven as effective ministers. Their talent for controversy currently outweighs their demonstrated competence.

In fact, just three ministers – Arun Jaitley, Nitin Gadkari and Ravi Shankar Prasad - are carrying too many of the important ministries.

It makes no sense for an unwell Arun Jaitley to be handling both finance and defence, when he could not complete his budget speech without interruption and even now is in hospital for a chronic diabetic condition.

It makes no sense for Gadkari to be handling two very important ministries – Surface Transport and Shipping as well as Rural Development (the latter handed over to him after the untimely death of Gopinath Munde).

It makes no sense even for a Ravi Shankar Prasad to handle both Law and Communications, given that both require his full attention.

It is simply untenable to have lightweight ministers like Dharmendra Pradhan to head a heavyweight ministry like petroleum, with no senior ministers above them. Energy surely needs a super cabinet minister.

Clearly, Modi has handed out too many important portfolios to too few people or lightweight politicians, and this could land him in trouble. It is simply unpardonable for him to keep defence with Jaitley when there is so much to be done in this sector.

Actually, it is surprising that so many key ministries should be in so few hands given Modi’s presidential style of functioning. If he is the fulcrum around which the NDA government revolves, it should be relatively easy for him to give ministries to competent non-politicians or even former bureaucrats. His talent pool can be expanded by bringing in non-MPs to handle crucial ministries.

While Modi has generally got good marks for his ministry’s first 100 days of governance, it is highly unlikely that this positive judgment will persist over the next 100 days if he does not expand his ministry pretty soon with competent people.

As head of a 282-member BJP Lok Sabha party and another 50 MPs from the NDA, his government is safe enough for him to risk taking on more competent people.

Getting small-time ministers to run important ministries also means all decisions will end up on his table. As this Business Standard story suggests, his own PMO is overloaded with work and may be slowing things down.

The Economist called him a one-man band, and however competent his PMO team is, this cannot be good for the country.

Modi should make bold moves. It is time Arun Jaitley was divested of either finance or defence – the latter, preferably – to be followed up by a full-fledged cabinet expansion. Many of the other ministers need to shed some portfolios too. The sooner the better.