The word shuffle, a cursory look at a dictionary will reveal, has at least two meanings. One meaning is moving people or things around in different positions or a different order. Another is dragging one’s feet along. In a remarkable feat, the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, has conveyed both these senses of the word when he made changes in his team of ministers. To describe it as a reshuffle is to exaggerate its significance. The changes announced by the prime minister do not suggest that their primary aim was to enhance governance. Rather, they are suggestive of a few cosmetic changes aimed to keep up the appearance of fulfilling the promise, made a few months earlier, of a major reshuffle when a similar meaningless exercise was carried out. The prime minister has again stopped short of initiating any major and radical change in his cabinet. In other words, he has dragged his feet: he has shuffled. The reason for this tardiness is not difficult to guess. Mr Singh does not want to rock the boat by removing key ministers from critical portfolios. That failure of confidence cannot be a sign that governance has top priority in the agenda of the second United Progressive Alliance government.

The appointment of a cabinet minister for railways fills a vacuum, and the choice was dictated by a powerful and successful ally. Jairam Ramesh loses environment but gets a cabinet berth; Salman Khurshid, given his educational qualifications, gets a portfolio which should have been his in the first place. Changes of this nature — and the so-called reshuffle is full of such alterations — do not add up to the making of a new team that is capable of bringing fresh energy and dynamism to governance. The prime minister needed, at this critical juncture, to look at the major problems facing the country and then proceed to pick a team that would be best qualified to address and solve those problems. This would not have been an easy task but at least he could have picked ministers with whom he is in empathy and would therefore have been able to imprint on governance and the economy the prime minister’s personal vision. This would have generated confidence in the government and in the prime minister’s abilities to institute reforms. Mr Singh has achieved neither. But he has managed to conflate two meanings of shuffle in a single act. It is remarkable what politics can make of a good man.