As Narendra Modi marches on in his third term in office and attains the distinction of becoming the longest continuously serving elected prime minister of the country and he is showered with well-deserved encomiums for the phenomenal achievements on various fronts, he is also confronted with questions about the quality of the men and women in his council of ministers and the sense of fatigue that has set in both in the government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Be it the social sector, infrastructure, economy, defence, transport, foreign policy, or digitisation, PM Modi’s record over the last 12 years is outstanding, but the credit, barring exceptions, has gone entirely to him. How competent or otherwise are the 71 members of PM Modi’s council of ministers? It appears as if the burden of delivering on promises is entirely on his shoulders. Similarly, while the BJP claims to be the biggest political party in the democratic world (140 million registered primary members), has anyone heard of its general secretaries or other office bearers travelling across the country and galvanising party cadres?

The party apparatus is a pale shadow of what it was two or three decades ago, when it had active general secretaries like Arun Jaitley, Pramod Mahajan, and Modi himself, who kept tabs on the goings-on in the states and were dispatched on trouble-shooting expeditions. For example, what has become of the party in Karnataka, or what is the rating of the chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, or of the BJP in these states? How well is the party organised to face........

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