By R JagannathanNarendra Modi clearly does not like anyone trying to second-guess his intentions, least of all media pundits. So, it should come as no surprise that his final choices for key ministries have thrown up many, well, surprises. As speculation tilted towards Amit Shah getting finance, he ended up at home.Nirmala Sitharaman broke another glass ceiling on Thursday when she was named India’s first woman finance minister. The significant portfolio shifts relate— apart from Sitharaman to finance— to Amit Shah at home, Rajnath Singh at defence, and former foreign secretary S Jaishankar at external affairs.Other major moves at the cabinet level include the return of Prakash Javadekar to the ministry of environment, and his replacement at human resource development (HRD) by Ramesh Pokhriyal, and the appointment of Narendra Singh Tomar at agriculture.Thanks to the exit of JP Nadda, who will probably run the party as president after Shah’s induction into the cabinet, Harsh Vardhan gets health and family welfare in addition to his old portfolio of science and technology.Two of the super-achievers in the first Modi cabinet, Piyush Goyal and Nitin Gadkari, get to keep their main portfolios of railways and road transport, with Goyal getting commerce additionally, and Gadkari micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Smriti Irani gets women and child development in addition to textiles. It is likely that many of these additional charges may get divested as the ministry is expanded later. The current strength of Team Modi 2.0 is 58, and there is scope for inducting another 23 ministers, though Modi stopped at least 10 short of that limit in his first term. He does not want an unwieldy ministry.Three points need to be made about these changes. First, the important ones in the big portfolios coincide with oncoming crises in the economy, the internal security environment, and the global security and trade scenario. Second, in all three areas that have seen changes, finance, home and external affairs, the prime minister will have a large and decisive say. And third, the changes signal a determination on the part of the PM to meet the challenges head-on by getting new brooms to sweep clean.The economy is clearly priority No 1. Despite being a surprise pick for finance, Sitharaman is not exactly a greenhorn in this area, having held the commerce portfolio earlier. But she has her work cut out for her, as her entry to North Block coincides with the GDP hitting a new post-demonetisation low of 5.8% in January-March 2018. The economy needs solid fiscal and monetary boosters, not to speak of longer term reforms in the factor markets, and a quick shift to GST 2.0, which must be simpler and better. The slowdown is clearly the result of higher-than-needed interest rates, the sharp reduction in fiscal spends on infrastructure in 2018-19 due to fiscal constraints, and the slowdown in rural consumption resulting from prolonged deterioration in agriculture’s terms of trade.The next big change is home, where Amit Shah will have to show extraordinary results on several fronts, including the militancy in Kashmir Valley and the Maoist threats in various states.The irony in his induction lies in the fact that he now heads the very same ministry that was behind the hounding of both Modi and himself after the 2002 Gujarat communal conflagration.With UPA in power during 2004-14, home ministers P Chidambaram and Sushilkumar Shinde used state resources to go after them in fake encounter cases, even though many of the allegations failed to pass legal muster. UPA also raised the bogey of ‘saffron terrorism’, and Shah may use his tenure to bury that idea once and for all, apart from making sure that the corruption cases against the Gandhi family (National Herald, real estate scams of Robert Vadra) and the father-son duo of P and Karti Chidambaram are more thoroughly investigated and supported by evidence that will stand up in court.The third big change, the induction of Jaishankar, is an inspired choice. Having served as India’s ambassador to both China and the US, and having played key roles in the negotiation of the India-US nuclear deal and the Dokalam stand-off with China in 2017, Jaishankar is clearly the right man to handle India’s two most important superpower relationships.The job is tricky, as this is a time of rising political and trade tensions between the two. India needs non-adversarial— if not friendly —ties with both countries if it wants to hasten its rise to middle income status over the next decade.The fourth change, Rajnath Singh in defence, will have its own challenges. Singh will have to field Opposition attacks on Rafale and also preside over the modernisation of the armed forces while promoting domestic defence production at a time when there is a pressure on resources.The Big Four in Team Modi 2.0 have to steer the ship at a difficult time for the economy and the global environment, both for trade and security. Their success depends on how ably Modi backs them.The writer is editorial director, Swarajya