It was heartening to see officials at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) lining up in the corridors to welcome Narendra Modi back to the corner room. Amid the rousing welcome and loud applause, the PM said something that was even more heartening. “It must be people’s PMO, not Modi’s PMO,” he said, adding 10 years ago, there was a perception in the country that the PMO was a power centre. “But we have tried to develop PMO as a catalytic agent that will produce energy, produce consciousness that lights up the entire system.”
Modi concluded the address by throwing light on the secret of his energy and said that a successful person is one who keeps the student within him alive. This is vintage Modi, with a clear articulation of his vision.
But the “student within” the PM should know that the public perception of the PMO is a little different. The common impression is that power is heavily centralised and instructions often go directly to bureaucrats in different ministries, sometimes without the knowledge of the ministers concerned. One must admit that such impressions may often be exaggerated, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the PMO has overriding control over most policy proposals and schemes of different ministries. In many ways, the “Gujarat model” has been replicated in the PMO. When Modi was the Gujarat chief minister, the CMO called the shots.
Retired IAS officer Anil Swarup, who served as Union coal secretary and education secretary in the Modi government, has spoken about the PMO’s tendency to keep control over everything, thereby shrinking the space for independent decision-making in ministries.
According to him, ministers often feel obligated to take approval from the PMO for routine matters as well. To be fair, the commentary about the PMO giving India a de facto presidential form of governance has been an old one. The PMO’s influence was all-pervasive under strong leaders such as Indira Gandhi and now Modi, but waned under Manmohan Singh who had to contend with the more influential National Advisory Council under United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi. This is not to suggest that a strong PMO isn’t required. It is needed as it often helps in pushing through tough decisions. But there is an urgent need now to draw the line somewhere. With the BJP falling short of the halfway mark, in its third version, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will need to function as an alliance, in both letter and spirit, of parties that come from different regions and states of this large country.
The PMO needs to change in keeping with the new reality — it needs to listen more and build consensus. Some of the ministers of the alliance parties need to be given more freedom to chart their own course within the overall vision of the NDA’s way of governance. The PMO should listen to what the PM said at a meeting of the newly elected NDA Members of Parliament in the Central Hall last week. Modi held up a model of a competitive and cooperative federalism, and said that regional and national aspirations must hold each other close, and be bound together inextricably. Thus, the new PMO must strengthen the institutional space for dialogue and decision-making between the prime minister and all Cabinet ministers and between the Centre and all states. In short, it’s time for the “people’s PMO” to start walking the talk of its boss.
