By Ruma Dubey

Sunday would have been a very busy day for Modi even as we all had a very relaxed holiday of nothingness but the usual chores.

This Cabinet reshuffle surely cocked a snook at the entire media – no one even in their wildest dreams or even in their production of ‘fake news’ could have even imagined that Modi would make a woman in charge of defence.

This was like a “sixer” right-out-of-the-stadium kind of shot! Putting a woman in charge of defence where the some of the most machoistic men rule was a very brave, bold and remarkable move.

The earlier reshuffle, which happened last July was more with an eye on the UP election but this time around, with 18 months to go, the reshuffle was politics too but more emphasis was on performance. Those who did not deliver were axed and those who did exceptionally well were rewarded with some of the best posts.

Four ministers were the ‘recognised’ ones - Dharmendra Pradhan - Petroleum and Natural Gas with additional charge now of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship; Piyush Goyal was given Railways and he holds Coal; Nirmala Sitharaman was put in charge of Defence and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi  was given Minority affairs.

Apart from making a woman in charge of defence, another commendable move was the inclusion of some of the performing bureaucrats — India’s former ambassador to the UN Hardeep Puri (IFS), former Delhi Development Authority (DDA) chairman KJ Alphons (IAS), former Mumbai police commissioner Satya Pal Singh (IPS), and former home secretary RK Singh (IAS).

Everyone is going ga-ga saying that this cabinet reshuffle was devoid of politics and it was only performance and only performance which dictated the choice. We beg to differ – there is nothing in politics which is not politically motivated and this reshuffle is a master stroke.

Apart from the four bureaucrats and one woman, the remaining four (totally nine new inductions) have been given berth with pure politics in mind – Shiv Pratap Shukla – a Brahmin to counter balance Adityanath who is a Thakur;  Ashwini Kumar Choubey – another Brahmin to balance the various top notch spots in Bihar given to others;, Virendra Kumar is a Dalit and they already have a tribal in the Rajya Sabha seat- as Madhya Pradesh goes to the polls in 2018, this Dalit and tribal choice would matter the most; Dattatreya Hegde is a well known Hindutva leader and will prove to be crucial in Karnataka when it goes to polls and then there is Gajendra Singh Shekhawat – a Thakur candidate to make Ashok Gehlot ineffective.  With Kerala elections round the corner, choice of Alphons could not have been better timed.

So all in all, the Cabinet reshuffle is a great and very intelligent mix of politics and performance. Surely with three women in important ministries – Sitharaman in Defence, Smriti Irani in textiles and added-on with Information & Broadcasting and Sushma Swaraj as External Affairs Minister – women votes are assured.

If only Modi now had an equally innovative and urgent solution to resolve India’s teeming unemployment problem….