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'Why not listen to the      message instead of      shooting the      messenger?' Spreading Christmas     Cheer Thank you, Raveena

What makes Yashwant Sinha so indispensable?

The real highlight of 'Reshuffle 2002' is not the creative redesignation of Lal Krishna Advani as deputy prime minister. It is not even the shift of Jaswant Singh from South Block to North Block. It is the magical survival of Yashwant Sinha in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's ministry after ministry and ministry.

Look at the irony. School kids have to pass nerve-wracking exams to proceed from one class to the next. Even municipal workers have to get decent appraisals from their bosses to stay on in their jobs. Top management has to win the approbation of peers and share-holders to get promoted....

Somehow, though, the normal rules of life that normal Indians are accustomed to, do not apply in the abnormal world of Indian politics.

In retaining Mr Sinha in his team and in getting him to swap places with Mr Jaswant Singh, Mr Vajpayee has sent the very clear message to the people of India that Charles Darwin was right about everything except the origin of the political species: it is the survival of the unfittest.

It might seem naive to expect a correlation between politics and performance in the first place. After all, politics runs on a different dynamic, not on spreadsheets. And it might seem unfair to be targetting Mr Sinha alone when several of his colleagues have performed worse and managed to survive without a squeak.

Indeed, if performance were the sole yardstick, then Mr Advani should consider himself mighty lucky. Because, what he gets for failing to stop infiltration, bomb blasts, riots, pogroms and worse is not a sack as Union home minister but a crack at the prime ministership! But we will let that pass.

We will let that pass, not because Mr Advani cannot be questioned -- and he must be at every opportunity: 'Where Sir is the white paper on the ISI that you promised four years ago?'-- but simply because his elevation has nothing to do with governance and everything to do with survival: his, his party's, Mr Vajpayee's.

Mr Sinha's case is different. He doesn't boast Mr Advani's stature or mass base, which means his survival or removal has a very limited impact. And, moreover, unlike Mr Advani whose non-show can be dressed up suitably in ugly xenophobic rhetoric to hoodwink us, Mr Sinha's poor show is there for all to see.

The author of five Budgets, not one of which anybody can remember, except for the rollbacks which followed each. The pioneer of a growth rate that was usually half of what he promised. The man who dragged the rupee and the stock markets to their nadir; presided over the UTI and US-64 collapse; watched the co-op banks and Home Trade scams....

The man who was linked to at least two major scandals: Flex Industries and Mauritius holdings. Permitted the bull run of the infotech stocks. Stabbed the middle class by playing around with retirement savings, increasing stamp duty, hiking tax rates, lowering bank interest rates at will, and sometimes even comically. Then there was Ketan Parekh....

If Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram made 'reforms' a sexy word, Mr Sinha turned it into a decidedly bad word which invited sniggers every time anybody in the now-showing circus uttered it. And what could have been more ridiculous than the finance minister of the country opposing Foreign Direct Investment in the print media at the Cabinet meeting last week?

But, no, none of all that counts in the party with a difference. Judging from the reasons that various BJP men have been trotting out, Mr Sinha has been shunted out not for what he did wrong [all of the above] but what he did right, which is to rock the middleclass out of its complacency, which apparently cost the party the assembly elections in Delhi!

Schools detain students in some classes because they are unsure that they will cope with tougher syllabi. Office employees get passed over because their bosses do not quite think they might be able to handle bigger responsibilities yet. Top management promotions are stalled because uncomfortable questions are asked....

Yet, in the circus that is Indian politics, Mr Sinha who made such a mess of the ministry of finance is suddenly found fit to head the even tougher ministry of external affairs! Mr Vajpayee and his puppeteers in the Sangh Parivar must know a thing or two about Mr Sinha that we do not know -- or must have seen a thing or two that we haven't.

Mr Advani's RSS is a bit like Mr Advani's ISI: both get blamed for anything and everything, and both, both like the LTTE, never deny anything. So, the RSS is being credited with Mr Sinha's survival instinct. The Sangh, we are being told, stuck to the supposedly 'swadeshi' career bureaucrat-turned-politician, so the prime minister had no choice but to retain him!

If the RSS really decides everything, why did it not try to stop Arun Jaitley's transfer to the party as spokesman? The law minister, if the gossip in Delhi is to be believed, was one of the above-50, below-60 Young Turks who asked Narendra Modi to withdraw his resignation offer at the BJP's national executive meet in Goa two months ago.

On the other hand, if Mr Vajpayee really thinks the country comes above party, and performance above loyalty, why did he relieve Mr Jaitley on what was probably his best day? The day the Civil Procedure Act 2002, which sets time limits for every stage of litigation -- summons, defence statement, recording of evidence, oral arguments, delivery of judgement -- came into existence.

Are we to presume that Mr Vajpayee and his puppeteers like what Mr Sinha did for the country and not what Mr Jaitley did for the harried litigants in the country? That Arun Shourie and Suresh Prabhu should get nothing more for doing something concrete but that those who didn't like Ananth Kumar should stay on and enjoy the benefits of office?

That C P Thakur should go for standing up to the anti-vivesectionists who are running riot in the name of animal rights -- stalling important research, endangering patients, costing jobs, jacking up drug prices -- but that a film star who endorses a well-known brand of whisky should get the health portfolio?

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The Cabinet Reshuffle 2002

Krishna Prasad