A letter to Dr Singh

Dear Dr Manmohan Singh,

I have questions for you Dr. Manmohan Singh, and they’re coming thick and fast. But don’t worry; they’re only a meager three—nothing more, nothing less. I promise.

You’re just a bit short of being a wonderful prime minister. Make the ministers (sorry criminals who parade as ministers) accountable for what they’ve done (CWG scam, 2G scam) and I’ll agree you’re marvelous, if not wonderful.

Remember, you were the one who lost face after the scandals that India, not the actually tainted ones.

How can you allow someone like Anna Hazare to take the upper hand? As Ramachandra Guha fittingly writes in the Telegraph (Dec. 2011), “This last failure explains, among other things, the appeal of Anna Hazare, a man whose intellectual vision is as confined as Singh’s is large.” That Anna Hazare who has been compared to Mahatma Gandhi, how can you be so fearful of someone like him or your own government or should I say: Sonia Gandhi?

Agreed you did so well during the Indo-US nuclear deal, you asserted yourself and how! Then again, we might have surrendered ourselves to the US; a deal with the devil must be paid for.

Sometimes I think, and I’m sure many will agree with me on this, that you were a better finance minister than you were a prime minister; “father of financial reforms,” they call you. You welcomed foreign investment in India and opened up Indian economy. Before that you were the chief economic adviser, finance secretary, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and Reserve Bank of India governor, where did all that go?

Agreed you’re the widely traveled Indian prime minister, after Nehru but why is it that you don’t travel more often within India? Yes, the world has its charms, but so does India. It’s important that you establish a rapport with Indians rather than George W. Bush who remarked that “the people of India love you.” Right now, I don’t think that’s the situation.

You’re known for being affable, a man of high integrity, and a decent man in Indian politics but at the same time you’re a social recluse, you keep to yourself and my number one pet peeve: why you don’t talk at all.

At best Sushma Swaraj sums it up for me: “Normally, our prime minister doesn’t talk, but when he does, then no one in his cabinet even listens to him.” It’s a big day for us when you decide to hold a press conference and address journalists.

Fine you have a Twitter account like Barack Obama or David Cameron, but addressing the nation when something big happens and holding criminals accountable and a once-in-a-while-friendly-chat would do. (In case if you didn’t know, there’s a parody of you called Dr Moneymohan Singh and he talks a lot!)

You really know you’re in danger and it’d do the nation good if you could answer my three questions. Rather, it’d do yourself good if you can answer those questions.

Yours sincerely,

A concerned citizen of India

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This was one of my op-ed assignments in college