On Wednesday Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar filled the last two berths in his Cabinet. The lucky ones were Vishwajit Rane and Mauvin Godinho. They both have a reason to cheer, more so for Godinho because he became minister after 17 long years in the wilderness. Rane was out of the cabinet for only five years. The only true-blue BJP members in the cabinet are Parrikar and Francis D’Souza. The rest were borrowed from coalition partners and the Congress, before and after the elections. So by definition, this is a minority Cabinet and the problem with minority Cabinets is that it is difficult to ascertain who’s the boss. On paper Parrikar is the chief minister, but in reality each minister is a law unto himself. And Vijai Sardesai is proving to be more vocal than the chief minister, who has shut himself in a tower, probably undertaking some form of ‘tapasya’ to atone for failing to lead the party to victory or praying for strength and wisdom to manage the egos and outbursts of all the strange bedfellows in the Cabinet. In the meanwhile, the remaining BJP MLAs, who have had to let go of Cabinet berths in order to form this ramshackle government, have been told to make sacrifices.
The question is how stable is this lot of Cabinet ministers? Your guess is as good as ours. And while BJP party president Amit Shah has advised party MLAs not to rock the boat, no one has advised Cabinet ministers not to rock the ship of state. Sardesai has already set the agenda for the south while Vinod Palyekar has made a list of things to do. Sudin Dhavalikar, like a seasoned politician will go about the job without much fanfare. Independent MLA Rohan Khaunte also has plans. It is natural for first time cabinet minister to want to finish everything they dreamed of in one term. Six months later, filled with wisdom on how governments work and tamed by bureaucrats they will talk less and hopefully do more.
Another question that begs an answer is, what will Parrikar do? With all his ministers taking the job of serving the people seriously, there really is not much of a job for him to do except provide them with enough money, a task that he is very good at. For him the larger problem is how to build the party in constituencies now represented by Cabinet ministers not from the BJP. It’s like trying to repair an SUV with parts from a motorcycle. Secondly, once he recovers from the rude shock that welfare schemes do not buy votes he will have to devise another plan to win over traditional BJP voters who abandoned the party. Parrikar has the toughest job in the State and it looks like he still hasn’t made up his mind on how to go about accomplishing the impossible.
