Mere Pyaare PM Sahib,
I appreciate your effort through our armed forces to secure our country’s borders. I must also express my gratitude for your eloquence while addressing us, for it has kept us away from critically assessing your governance. I would like to, through your medium, express my Mann Ki Baat to the Nation on your governance. I raise critical questions on your governance so far, with a plea for a united India.
During the 2014 elections, you expressed your desire to take India forward, towards economic development, good governance, and implement the Gujarat model. Two and a half years on, there seems to be little economic change other than large advertising campaigns and skyrocketing valuations of a few companies. The image that I had in mind as an ordinary Indian when you said economic development and good governance was job creation, better education, a happier social life, better healthcare, greater individual security and a less intrusive aunt.
The “bold” but rash move that you made on November 8, followed by your “diktats” about how I ought to think, remind me of the Syrian dictator, who thought he could run the country without dialogue and consensus. Your management of the affairs in Kashmir, with brute force, rather than dialogue, shows that you are willing to continue in your ways even if “innocent puppies” come under your car, as was the case during the Gujarat Riots.
I have tried my best to look at what development work you have done as the Prime Minister, and I feel disappointed in saying that I couldn’t find much. Maybe it is that you have done much, but the narrative has been focused on many ideological wars, sidelining whatever little you have done.
Please, could you make us aware of how many new hospitals and educational institutions you have commissioned with public funds, given that our country has a shortage of quality health care and education?
Okay, tell us what you have done to ensure our public hospitals, which are hospitals of last resort for the poor, are consistently providing quality healthcare?
Please, could you tell us how many more jobs you have created, or just how much the median income has gone up?
Please, could you share in measures that you think best, how you have improved governance? As I understand from media reports, you like to control the governance from your office, and through flexibly inexperienced institutions that you create at your behest. In the past few months, I have felt as if you are dictating how we should live, act, breathe and what we should believe, rather than engaging us in a dialogue about our future. I understand your need for supremacy, but when 33% of the voters voted for the BJP, there was another 67% that voted for a democratic dialogue.
I could concede that many of the few steps you have taken, that have been well received by foreign administrators, boil down to your vision of making India like the West. Though Sir, India is not like the West. There is not another country in the world that has such a consistent history of innovation and governance, or one that has faced the challenges that India faces today owing to its various caste divisions. India must carve its own path, and not follow failed models of the west.
The neo-liberal capitalist model thrives on inequality and discrimination, where being born poor is a crime punishable with a life sentence. We must learn from them, both successes and failures, but not blindly adopt them by forgetting our own strengths.
Mere pyaare mitr, with the first few steps into 2017, as the Prime Minister may you redirect your attention from waging a war of Hindu Nationalism on our suffering nation, towards building a prosperous and equitable India for all, not a preposterous one. After all, you are a Prime Minister for Development and not a Minister for War.
Yours sincerely,
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