Some of the moves made by the Modi government or his ministers have been criticised for violating constitutional norms. He clearly needs to be careful, but can the Congress system of patronage and corruption be uprooted by being nice?

Over the last two days, we have seen a flurry of media articles on the 30-day performance scorecard of the Narendra Modi government. It is illustrative of our shortening attention spans in an age of minute-by-minute TV, digital and social media commentary that 30 days is assumed to be a decent enough time for assessing a new government’s performance. From 100 days, it is now down to 30 days. Soon it will be a week and then days and then hours.

So one can understand Modi's concern over not being given even a 100-hour “honeymoon” period after taking office. But then, he is a product of the media age and its hyper coverage, and he has to get used to it. I believe that Modi is always going to live in a fishbowl every day of his prime ministership - just as he was subjected to the harshest glare of the media in his 12-year tenure as chief minister of Gujarat.

In fact, he will face more scrutiny than any other political leader because of the scale of his victory and the change he threatens to bring to mollycoddled Delhi. With Modi as Prime Minister, the old you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours power nexus between Congress governments, babudom, academia, power brokers, the social elite and the mainstream media is facing an existential threat. Vajpayee never threatened the status quo; Modi does.

The sharp and adverse commentary on every action - howsoever remotely related to Modi - is the old establishment's way of looking for chinks in Modi’s armour so that it can claw back some of its old powers. This is why every day we hear tut-tutting about Modi destroying this institution or that. Most of it is actually off the mark.

This article is not remotely related to discussing Modi’s 30-day scorecard, but about examining the charge that Modi is doing more damage to institutions than expected. We have to move back and check to see which of his actions was unavoidable, which was avoidable and not justified, and which ones were both unavoidable and justified. This article is also not about commenting on his specific policy decisions, such as the rail fare hike, the delay in announcing a gas pricing policy, or his foreign policy initiatives, which can be delinked from institutional issues.

Of course, it would be easy to dismiss allegations against Modi with a simple counter: which constitutional norm did the UPA observe during its 10-year tenure, but that would be just more of tu-tu-main-main. So let's get to the real arguments.

Among the things Modi has faced adverse comments on are the following: the appointment of retired Trai chairman Nripendra Misra as his principal secretary by amending the law that bars him from coming back to government (it was done through an ordinance); the move to send some Congress-appointed governors packing (already partly successful); the HRD ministry’s involvement in the termination of Delhi university's four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP); denying or delaying leader of opposition status to Congress in the Lok Sabha; and blocking the appointment of Gopal Subramanium as a Supreme Court judge by letting (or getting) the CBI and Intelligence Bureau to rake up some suspicions about past actions that may or may not hold up on detailed scrutiny.

Three points need to be made upfront: first, to make an omelette you need to break eggs; to deliver on promises to the electorate and change the Delhi culture of patronage and corruption, you have to change the rules. Second, not all institutions are worth preserving. Some need to go or be drastically remodelled. Third, and most important, key institutions destroyed need to be re-established.

It is with these premises in mind that we need to judge the actions of the Modi government. So let's look at some of the government's decisions and judge for ourselves.

#1: The appointment of retired Nripendra Misra as Modi's principal secretary has been done by an enabling ordinance. Under Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (the full form of Trai) rules, past chairmen cannot take up future government assignments. This is generally a good law since bureaucrats tend to keep giving themselves new jobs after retirement. The law was also intended to ensure that powerful Trai chiefs do not use their powers while in office to favour corporates or government and then swing post-retirement jobs as a quid pro quo.

The law is clearly too strict. While not joining corporates for two years makes sense, not joining government, even after a longish cooling off period, seems to have been designed to ensure that high positions are offered to officers who are still in service. Misra retired five years ago, and under a different government. Five years is a good enough cooling off period for returning to government (when the corporate cooling off period is just two years). But most importantly, a Prime Minister is entitled to take his pick for this most sensitive of assignments. After 10 years of serving another government, it is not unreasonable for a new PM - who has many enemies willing to damage him - to get a man he can trust. Modi probably decided that someone outside the government, but with experience of government, was his best bet. Nothing wrong in that.

But the law was changed for one person. So the potential for future abuse is there. Modi needs to make amends by making the law less changeable in future.

#2: Is changing governors following a change in government a problem? Absolutely not. This is because the job is largely ceremonial. Most incumbents are in Raj Bhavans for past political services rendered to the party in power, and not because of any competence for the job. The governor’s job anyway requires no competence beyond good manners and charm. Where they are active, governors largely are into harassing opposition-run state governments, as we saw with Kamla Beniwal and HR Bhardwaj in Gujarat and Karnataka.

The governor's job can easily be abolished, or one could retain it as paid sinecure for retiring politicians. No institution has been damaged by asking Congress-appointed governors to put in their papers – for there was no institution left to damage. Those governors unwilling to leave can be transferred or asked to go. The Supreme Court has said that governors should not be asked to go without a reason, but it did not indicate what kind of “reason” is acceptable to it. Is political incompatibility not a good enough reason for worthless jobs? We need not shed crocodile tears over governors.

#3: The HRD ministry’s involvement in the termination of Delhi University's four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) is considered an assault on the autonomy of educational institutions. This is certainly right, but the reality is that few government-run institutions can claim real autonomy despite being designated as entitled to it. In the past, HRD has meddled with even the IITs and IIMs, and Delhi University is far lower down the food-chain of autonomy.

Autonomy requires two things: financial self-sufficiency, and a clear delinking of the institution’s governing apparatus from the government’s decision-making processes, including patronage processes, both at centre and states. Autonomy was not an issue in the past because we have had only Congress governments, and most institutions anyway had Congress-oriented people at the top. Take the case of another “autonomous” institution, Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. The place is stuffed with all the Congress-Left elite of the Nehruvian consensus, with little place for diversity. This can hardly be the hallmark of autonomy. Autonomy should normally lead to diversity, but what we have at JNU something else.

Before we talk of autonomy, thus, we first need to rid so-called autonomous institutions of their deadwood and excess political affiliations. Then we need to challenge them to find their own resources for growth; last, we need to legislate a clear hands-off policy between HRD and the institution. After that, it might be worthwhile to talk of autonomy in the real sense. Currently, only private educational institutions can be called autonomous.

#4: The Congress, having failed to get even 10 percent of the Lok Sabha seats, is not entitled to leader of opposition (LoP) status under past rules. The Modi government and the Lok Sabha Speaker have so far let the Congress stew in its own anxieties about it, but ultimately the government may well have to give Congress LoP status. This is for two reasons: constitutional and political. Many constitutional appointments (Lokpal, CVC, etc) need the government and the LoP to jointly recommend names. This can’t be done if there is no LoP, or by arbitrarily choosing a non-government opposition party for the role. The political point is this: not appointing an LoP may force non-government parties to seek to work together. This is something Modi ought to prevent. So, LoP is something the Modi government should offer to the Congress.

#5: The most controversial move of the government has been to block the appointment of senior advocate Gopal Subramanium as a Supreme Court judge by letting (or getting) the CBI and Intelligence Bureau leak some information about him relating to the 2G case. The government’s real reasons may be the following: Subramanium was amicus curiae in one of the fake encounter cases involving Amit Shah, who could well be the BJP president. But there is also the issue that he was associated for long with the UPA as solicitor-general.

I believe that the Modi government was right to oppose his appointment for political reasons, and wrong in choosing to do so with a small smear campaign.

Over the longer term, there is also a need to get out of the current system of judges nominating judges through their own non-transparent and secretive collegium system. The executive must have some say in the appointment of judges for the simple reason that the political complexion of the judiciary is not irrelevant to how a law is interpreted. For example, if Gopal Subramanium was involved in drafting some of the UPA’s laws, his being a judge when the Modi government seeks to change some of these laws cannot be considered as being of no consequence. Judges often have political opinions and approaches; many of them do not restrict themselves to interpreting the law.

As I have written before, till a new law is legislated to create a judicial appointments commission, the government should have some power to convey its views on the specific choices of the collegium. But it should not be launching covert campaigns to get its points across. It should simply say no and stick to it.

But any discussion of Modi’s brushes with constitutional issues would make no sense without reference to the one area where he has had an absolutely positive and big impact: restoring the legitimacy and prestige of the Prime Minister’s Office. This power was destroyed by the Sonia Gandhi dispensation over 10 years by emasculating the office under Manmohan Singh. By restoring the primacy of the PMO and by ensuring collective responsibility, Modi has, in fact, ensured accountability in government.

For this, more than his government’s other minor failings, one should clearly give him the benefit of the doubt for now. In any case, the long-term system of patronage and corruption created by decades of Congress political culture cannot be changed without making waves. You cannot expect the same people who benefited from the past system to not shout and scream when they are being uprooted from their comfort zones.

The legitimate question to ask is: is one system of patronage merely being replaced with another or is something more fundamental being done? The answer to that, though, cannot be attempted for at least another year or two.