Smriti Irani is an asset for the BJP. Her two-year stint as the education minister has shown positive results. Her speeches on the floor of parliament and her interviews with ‘eminent’ journalists have won many hearts. Her politicking in Amethi has put the Gandhi family on the back-foot. It is naïve to perceive her transfer to the less significant textile ministry as a demotion.
The cabinet reshuffle, according to many, was performance oriented. Those who did well were promoted, and those who didn’t were given less important roles or shunted out altogether. However, this might not be completely accurate.
The education ministry that Prime Minister Modi entrusted Smriti Irani with, is considered to be among the toughest ministries to run. Years of stagnation and mismanagement have led to the formation of an impenetrable cesspool. When it was decided that she would be given the job, people laughed at her. They believed she was not qualified enough. But if qualification was the key to cleaning this mess up and creating an effective ecosystem, the heavily enlightened likes of Kapil Sibbal would have done the trick.
Smriti Irani proved to be proficient. She achieved in two years what none did in sixty, and her achievements ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. She built toilets in every school that didn’t have one, a whopping two hundred thousand of them, to increase female enrollment. She digitalized every CBSE and NCERT textbook, and made it available online for free. The building of a record number of central universities was commenced, and several initiatives were taken to bring Indian colleges to global standards. Scholarships were linked to Aadhar Cards, and a genuine push was made towards spreading knowledge with the use of technology and skilling the youth. The biggest achievement probably was the drafting of the new Education Policy, which will released soon and is touted to be a game changer.
Smriti Irani has been controversial. But unlike other ministers, the party has benefitted politically each time she got embroiled in anything unpleasant.
Whether it was the Rohit Vemula controversy or the nationalism debate or the Twitter battles she fought, she came out of each one looking good. She has been among the favourite targets of the mainstream media, especially of those outlets and news-traders which are blatantly anti-BJP. Their hostility towards her stems from the fact that she has appropriated Rahul Gandhi’s bastion of Amethi and looks all set to dethrone him from one of the only burrows that the family has been left with. But she has warded off every attack from the media in style. The calm yet stinging answers journalists receive from her when they attempt to play the fool, exposes them and their not-so-well-hidden agendas completely. An interview with Rajdeep Sardesai and two with Barkha Dutt come to mind.
Infighting could not have led to her demotion, considering how performance oriented both Mr. Modi and Mr. Shah are. Smriti Irani was para-dropped in Amethi right before the Lok Sabha elections. It was a last minute call, and despite that she nearly beat Rahul Gandhi who was the de-facto prime ministerial candidate! Ever since, she has galvanized ground support and adopted the constituency as her own. She visits often, and has initiated several projects there. As the Gandhi scion holidays abroad, she has been readying the ground to embarrass the family massively come 2019. Her political credentials cannot be questioned.
The obvious answer as to why she has been assigned a less significant role is that she will play a crucial role in the Uttar Pradesh elections next year. Her potential has been recognized, and will be used. The huge support she has in and around the Amethi area, coupled with how quickly and effectively she can turn public opinion around, will come in handy for the party. There was talk a few months back about how she will be made the chief ministerial candidate for Uttar Pradesh, but it looks like the party has taken a strategic call not to make any such announcement, at least for the time being. She will probably be chief minister if the party were to be elected, but for now a less important ministry means less time and energy spent on administration and much more on politics.
The reason Smriti Irani isn’t projected as the chief ministerial face of the party is because she isn’t as recognized a face as Mayawati or Mulayam in Uttar Pradesh. With the complicated caste equations that play out in the country’s largest state, the party will probably be better off projecting five or six faces from different social backgrounds. Had she dropped out of the cabinet entirely to engage in party work, the BJP’s opponents would have projected her as the de-facto chief ministerial candidate. This wouldn’t allow the other vote catchers, each catering to a specific demographic, to deliver optimally.
The textile ministry is just a pit-stop to Lucknow. The Prime Minister has stated on several occasions that the country’s progress depends largely on the state of Uttar Pradesh. Imagine Smriti Irani, calm, confident and competent, sitting on the chief minister’s chair.
