Meet on MoS unemployment today

NEW DELHI: A sense of deja vu will greet Mr Manmohan Singh when he holds confabulations with members of his ministerial team here on Tuesday to address grievances of a section of junior ministers who complain that they are under-worked or have no work at all, apart from cutting ribbons and undertaking routine trips.

A similar meeting was held during UPA-I. Faced with complaints from the ministers of state that their services were being under-utilised, Mr Singh had convened a similar meeting here in February, 2006. It ended with the prime minister telling his senior colleagues to ``allocate work fairly’’ and to ``guide young members of the council of ministers.’’

Barring Ms Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Mr Sharad Pawar (NCP), Mr A Raja, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, Mr M K Azhagiri (all from DMK)and Mr Farooq Abdullah (NC), the remaining 27 Cabinet ministers are from the prime minister’s party.

Thus, in most cases, it is ministers hailing from Congress who are being criticised for being miserly with their junior ministers as far as distribution of work was concerned. There is a feeling that the problem could have been settled in-house, rather than by convening a formal meeting for the purpose.

Complaints of junior ministers deprived of adequate work, or with no work at all, have been there for years now. During P V Narasimha Rao’s tenure as prime minister there was a similar situation. When Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee became head of government, he too was accosted with the `I-have-no-work’ grouse from ministers of state, forcing him to convene a meeting of his entire ministerial team in June, 2001, to address the issue. Even that meeting failed to arrive at anything tangible.

The nature of the Indian Constitution is such that there is very little that any prime minister can do to ensure that his junior ministers are kept properly employed. The distribution of work is left to the discretion of the Cabinet minister.

Thus the relationship between a junior minister and his senior colleague is dependent, to a large extent, on the latter’s personality and rapport that the duo build over time. There is a general perception that stronger ministers leave very little work for juniors.