Firstly, for a majoritarian government in office for 38 months now, poor outturns visible on ground of most of the headline grabbing programmes announced with fanfare from time to time make a poor advertisement. The urgency of undoing any negative impact on the carefully nurtured image of Prime Minister Modi brooked no delay.

Secondly, the exercise also reflects an aggressive BJP's desire to make it virtually a single-party rule. Expectations of the facade of NDA being strengthened by associating JD(U) of Bihar Chief Minister Mr Nitish Kumar and a weakened AIDMK in Tamil Nadu (where BJP hopes to become an assertive force ) were belied..More State-level BJP leaders have now been inducted into Government from states going to polls.

The Prime Minister enforcing performance rule had six Ministers make way for others to do better. But the overall size of the Council of Ministers at 76 remains unwieldy. He thus had to promote relatively well performing juniors to Cabinet level like Mr Piyush Goyal, who will now man the vital infrastructure, Railways, and Mr Dharmendhra Pradhan, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, now also entrusted with additional charge of skill development.

The prestigious Ganga renovation project has been taken over from Ms.Uma Bharati and transferred to Mr Nitin Gadkari Minister for Road Development, besides development of Water Resources, with the new emphasis on project for inter-linking of major rivers. Indeed, a tall order in the absence of rationalisation of portfolios with an integrated approach to major areas of development.

The elevation of Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman, a highly articulate spokesperson for the party, as Defence Minister, a key portfolio and as a member of the Cabinet Committee on Security, is the high point of the Cabinet reconstituion,reflecting the Prime Minister's confidence in her skills.

From Commerce and Industry, now handed to Mr Suresh Prabhu, Ms.Sitharaman moves to the more challenging responsibility of modernisation of India's defences, keeping in view a hostile neighbour to the west and minatory utterances from too demanding a Northern neighbour with its global ambitions. She can be a smart negotiator too as India upgrades its defence technologies '

Mr Modi, who is good in admonishing and taming bureaucrats for better performance, has tried to make up for under-performance of his Government in some areas writ large for shortfalls, by bringing in retired administrators and diplomats and assigning major developmental responsibilities . These include housing and urban development, power and renewable energy, electronics and IT, and human resource development. Here again, they could have been placed in areas where they were known for specialisation.

Overall Mr Modi may not have accomplished a thorough-going job, and may need to make adjustments in coming months. But the reshuffle has totally ignored the economic front, the way he has allowed existing incumbents to continue as in notably Agriculture. Hopefully Mr Sursh Prabhu would begin to give more attention to exports which has a significant share in India's GDP, besides contributing to a revival of manufacturing, both large and medium and small sectors.

The reshuffle does not reflect in any way the seriousness of the growth slowdown in the economy to 5.6 per cent (GVA), in the first quarter (April-June) of Fiscal 2018, job drought, the damage from demonetisation beyond the short term, and a steep decline in manufacturing output. No doubt, at last, the Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley has conceded that growth decline is a matter of concern which needed both policy and investment approaches afresh. It remains to be seen whether Government would do more on fiscal front with higher spending on infrastructure which might also evoke private investment. (IPA Service)