Illustrations by Saurabh Singh Illustrations by Saurabh Singh

W hen Manmohan Singh, as prime minister, also held charge of the coal portfolio in UPA 1, an upset and angry Dasari Narayana Rao, the minister of state (MoS) for coal, had walked in to the prime minister's office (PMO) to confront his boss. Rao's grouse: Proceedings of the screening committee meant to allot coal blocks were not being routed through his desk, a violation in his book and a clear case of overstepping by PMO bureaucrats.

The PMO defence was that the chairperson of the now-maligned screening committee, which also had representatives from coal-bearing states, was the coal secretary and once he had signed the minutes, the rest was plain procedure. The MoS's insistence on approving minutes of the meeting was seen as a needless step, just another loop in the red tape.

That day, Singh opted for the middle path. He asked his officials not to transgress boundaries of an elected representative and to ensure the file went to the MoS but, at the same time, made it clear that Rao was not authorised to make any changes to the minutes. But Rao, sources said, would just sit on the file, raising doubts and sometimes suspicion. But then, the argument which prevailed was that the office of a minister, headed by an elected representative, could not be ignored.

Illustrations by Saurabh Singh Illustrations by Saurabh Singh

Cut to 2014. Coal Minister Piyush Goyal, determined to bring about a serious transformation in the sector, decided to find a way to fast-track the appointment of the chairman of Coal India Ltd. He broached the matter at the highest levels and came up with a way to take the process outside the ambit of the Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) system. The new process involved setting up of a search committee, drawing up a shortlist and, finally, selection by the coal minister. Goyal even announced this at a press conference to mark 100 days of the Government as a measure of his commitment to the job.

Objections were, however, raised, with PESB, a statutory body, also red-flagging the new process. Within a week, after a bureaucratic review of processes, the PMO decided to bring the selection back under the PESB's ambit. The coal minister has since maintained

a low profile, possibly even waited for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to return from hospital before firming up the ordinance on coal block allocation.

But Goyal can console himself that he isn't alone. Other colleagues, including some with hefty cabinet portfolios, have similar stories to share. The era of ministerial autonomy and influence, it seems, is over. Narendra Modi is instituting a well-oiled system of controls, where no office is sure of its authority, even that of the cabinet minister. While that has firmly established the Prime Minister and his office atop the power hierarchy, it has also left ministers cautious, reticent and feeling constantly insecure.

Illustrations by Saurabh Singh Illustrations by Saurabh Singh

For a PM who wants to be hands-on, it is only normal to demand greater monitoring and devise a way to access the results himself when needed. E-Samiksha, at first glance, looks like just another fancy, yet effective, e-governance tool of the Government. But there's more to this software. It is a platform that allows the PMO to establish a direct channel with ministry officials, bypassing the cabinet minister.

The software, which is loaded on the PM's own iPad, is a rather simple innovation that has links to every key ministry, largely all infrastructure, energy and other critical departments. All important communication to the PM, especially from chief ministers, is uploaded in the category relevant to the department concerned, and an official is assigned to monitor this platform. Any "action point" is immediately communicated down the hierarchy and feedback, in the form of an update, is prepared for the PM. The minister concerned is often apprised later, unlike in the past when letters would first be sent to the ministry, where the secretary would inform the minister and take due action.

Graphic by Saurabh Singh Graphic by Saurabh Singh

It is learnt that every department has to update its feedback on various action points on the fifth of every month. While the PM and senior PMO officials enjoy complete access to the information loaded on the platform, ministry officials can only access the link to their department and matters specific to them. The fear being expressed in bureaucratic circles is that E-Samiksha could become unwieldy in the long run going by the amount of information being loaded regularly.

Routine processes have also been tweaked to enshrine and ensure a PM-centric approach. All cabinet notes have to be sent to the PMO twice at the beginning when the sponsoring ministry sends the note for consultation, and when the final note is prepared after consultations within a two-week time frame. The PMO gets three days to examine the final note and until then, no copies can be made for further circulation.

In practice, insiders say, ministries rarely know of the final version of the cabinet note, which on many occasions just comes as "table item" on the day of the meeting with the PMO, in some cases, even surprising the sponsoring ministry with last-minute changes.

A minister or secretary of any ministry can raise any objection at the cabinet meeting, but only after explaining why this was not put down during the consultation process. All this has been spelled out in a detailed letter from the Cabinet Secretariat.

Illustrations by Saurabh Singh Illustrations by Saurabh Singh

At the meeting too, sources said, ministers rarely speak on specific items except for senior ministers such as Jaitley and, at times, M. Venkaiah Naidu and Nitin Gadkari. Time spent on each item is usually short with the cabinet secretary just reading out the paragraph containing the decision, which is usually approved without much discussion. Most of the time consumed is accounted for by non-agenda political issues or if the PM has anything else to address.

The PMO is directly involved in all key policy issues. It is for the first time that any PM has "all important policy matters" as part of his portfolio, something that allows Modi's office to stay within the ambit of the transaction of business rules while intervening in the working of any ministry, even through E-Samiksha. This was also part of Modi's portfolio as Gujarat CM.

For instance, as of now, the issue of gas pooling price mechanism needs to be resolved if gas-powered electricity generation units have to start operating. The PMO has taken over the subject and is getting the ministries of petroleum and natural gas as well as the power ministry to draft a "joint cabinet note" on the lines of what it desires, again a first in terms of government functioning. The purpose is to fix price of gas by pooling imported and domestically produced gas.

The clueless and the cautious

The falling salience of the cabinet minister can also be gauged by the fact that most cabinet notes are moved following a PMO instruction. No ministry, barring the odd exception, has so far initiated a proposal on its own. On many occasions, ministers have been caught on the wrong foot. Consider this: ?

Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had little to do with the 'Make in India' campaign until the last stage. It was a Modi initiative for which Industry Secretary Amitabh Kant and A.K. Sharma, joint secretary in the PMO, were in direct touch. Only when the PM cleared the plan was Sitharaman briefed on the details and what she could say at its launch. ?

Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari was not kept in the loop on the Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana until it was announced from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Cabinet approval for the programme was taken after the speech. Gadkari knew of it as one of the ideas his ministry had worked on. ?

HRD Minister Smriti Irani was chairing a meeting on skill development when a notification was issued announcing the beat had been taken off her list and was now with the ministry of youth affairs and sports. ?

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, one of the few to have initiated a scheme on his own and that too on cow protection, was so cautious that he first deputed a joint secretary to informally discuss the idea with the PMO. Only after knowing the Prime Minister's mind did his ministry put Rashtriya Gokul Mission on paper. ?

Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had to back off after announcing the continuation of export incentives for sugar mills. With the PMO and Cabinet Secretariat asking uncomfortable questions, Paswan had to retract by forcing the blame on "inflexible" mill owners. Similarly, he had no input as food minister on who will head the committee to restructure the Food Corporation of India. He was just informed that BJP leader Shanta Kumar would head the panel.

Barring Jaitley, who too has had a few setbacks in getting extensions for DRDO officials, none of the other ministers can appoint or remove officials in their department. For each placement or replacement, sources say, they await PMO clearance.

In one of his first cabinet meetings, Modi cautioned ministers against political appointments and asked them to identify posts, their eligibility criteria and look for suitable candidates in consultation with the party organisation. As this message trickled down, the pressure on ministers reduced, as did their clout. "The number of applicants has gone down as they realise that ministers alone cannot push the appointments," confided a ministerial aide.

In one instance, a cabinet minister reached out to an RSS pracharak for a nomination to avoid any allegation. An influential minister like Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar is learnt to have instructed his officials that all posts must be forwarded to the PMO for nomination before filling them up like it happened in the case of the National Board of Wildlife.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is still awaiting a decision from the top on whether his ministry's international cooperation wing will be headed by an IAS or IFS officer. His other big problem, like that of Goyal and other ministers, is the appointment of independent directors to PSU boards. Having removed UPA appointees following a political directive, none of these ministers are shortlisting names until they receive fresh directions from the PM.

A heavyweight minister like Gadkari could not get his trusted aide Vinay Sahasrabuddhe appointed in the rural development ministry while Paswan had to get his old aide O.P. Rathi into the government fold by landing him a job in Food Corporation of India.

Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi too had to compromise on the choice of the National Commission for Women chairman, which went to party candidate Lalitha Kumaramangalam.

Even known Modi acolytes such as Irani have just stopped moving personnel proposals, unless asked specifically, after the PMO turned down her move to grant extension to two joint secretaries. Caught between constant pressure from the RSS and her endeavour to impress her mentor, the PM, whom she refers to as "Sir", Irani appears to be finding it difficult to take decisions. Hundreds of files await her approval with close aide Sanjay Kachroo, a former ABVP member, working overtime to guide her despite no official sanctity to his presence in the ministry; his unfettered access to official documents through the HRD minister's office is a constant eyesore in the ministry.

Foreign visits is another area where cabinet ministers find themselves shortchanged. They have to submit a post-visit report to the PMO on each trip they undertake. Modi has made it clear through fresh guidelines that every trip, official or private, will require political clearance. A request has to be made at least 10 days in advance it used to be five earlier and most importantly, it must contain a detailed justification note followed by a post visit report.

Even secretaries have been asked to stay away from foreign trips and, wherever possible, send junior officers instead. As a result, ministers try not to take chances, dreading a rejection from the top. A few of the seasoned campaigners have, however, started taking off on visits.

Shades of the iron lady

Effective communication is critical to establishing control and the PMO is quite particular on that count.

So, at 9 a.m. every day, the information and broadcasting (I&B) secretary has a meeting with heads of all key communication units of the Government including the All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan, where the Prime Minister's media projection based on his outreach and events for the day is decided.

No longer is this just left to Doordarshan or AIR to handle. The I&B secretary monitors and reports the same to the PMO, where he is summoned quite frequently, without even his minister knowing, to discuss major campaigns such as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

Modi goes down to the last detail. For instance, for the launch of Swachh Bharat, he even wanted households to fly kites carrying the theme message, an exercise he claimed to have successfully conducted in Gujarat. The plan, however, could not take off as it was difficult to implement this nationwide.

For Modi and his office, controlling and dominating channels of communication is a political imperative. So while his trusted trio of Pratik Doshi, Hemang Jani and Hiren Joshi do the back-end work in the PMO besides managing Modi's social media projection, the I&B bureaucracy is constantly on its toes ensuring that there is no let-up on the Government front. The Prime Minister himself gets a late evening briefing on his media response from old Gujarat hand Jagdish Thakkar while Doshi fills in on the performance feedback from social media.

Such direct control is a throwback to Congress-led majority governments of the past. Former cabinet secretary Naresh Chandra told INDIA TODAY that this approach is similar to that of Indira Gandhi. "But in that era, the control extended beyond Delhi, to states and chief ministers, who used to take instructions from private secretaries. They haven't reached that stage yet."

Chandra, however, added that some of the change is a "necessary corrective" because the "coordinating authority" of the PMO and the Cabinet Secretariat had suffered under the previous government. "As for the ministers, much of it is inherent in the situation where most, barring a few, lack experience. But, on the whole, this (reducing relevance of the minister) is less desirable. They are constantly worried about reshuffles and fresh inductions into the cabinet. On the other hand, rules and procedures are just the same despite big statements. So, how do they deliver? I hope that this changes in due course. As of now though, it's the PMO which is in full command."

British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who was on an official visit to India recently, perhaps got the best description of the shape of things at his meeting with Jaitley. It all started with Fallon recounting his early days as a junior minister in the Margaret Thatcher government, how she enforced discipline and demanded results from young politicians. At that point, insiders said, Jaitley told Fallon that it was somewhat the same under Modi, where the emphasis is on delivery, which includes keeping its word to foreign governments.

In many ways, if the last 10 years was about the Congress, as its leaders such as Pranab Mukherjee used to stress, trying to prove that it can run a coalition government for a full term, then the Modi Government appears to be about the BJP trying to prove that it can run a majority government through effective command and control.

with Ravish Tiwari and Anubhuti Vishnoi

Follow the writer on Twitter @pranabsamanta

