An Open letter to Manmohan Singh

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

When I was a school going kid, you suddenly became a hero by becoming India's economic reformer. You were hailed by media for bringing India out of her woes and putting her into a fast track of growth. As a kid, we didn't know that much economics so we didn't bother much but as we grew and gradually came into college, we realized how you changed our lives by throwing plethora of global opportunities which middle class Indians could just dreamt off a decade ago. This is the reason why our generation too treated you as a messiah for leading us to the new horizon. We all had mixed reaction for your first term as PM, we all blamed coalition constraints for majority of stuck plans. General election of 2009 resulted in some fruitful results for you and all Indians had very high hopes and expectations. The celebration was very much apparent when we saw upper circuit getting imposed in BSE. I had never heard nor seen any upper circuit incidents in a stock market, till then. This itself is a big testimony of high hopes. But I am sorry to say that hope or expectation is fading with every passing month of this tenure.

With various media reports and insiders' information, it is now no secret that you don't have any control in cabinet, though you officially head it. This itself is a big let down for Indian citizens. Being the biggest democracy of the world, we surely expect our PM to be on top of everything and also have things or people, under him, under control. We surely expect our PM to come forward and address the nation more frequently. This surely should not be the biannual national events on national days. It is not only your duty but our right to hear the reactions and action points from you on all important national and international issues, which concern India. We need little more dynamism when it comes to communication between PMO and common man. This will surely not only come through PMO press releases rather it will be more effective, when our PM, himself, comes in the open and addresses the media and nation more frequently. This is hard to believe that you don't think so or you don't want to do so.

The other important issue, which concerns now every Indian is lack of accountability in our government. Couple of days back, there were two back to back major grid failures. Rather than asserting root cause or giving assurances to the citizen that why it happened and what are you doing to prevent such occurrences in the future, the minister got a promotion and he was handed over one of the most important portfolios of the country. The usual blame game began in India but we are still in the dark. As soon as Mr. Shinde resumed charge of home ministry, we heard the news of bomb blast in Pune. Not sure, if this is again taken seriously. Post 26/11, we have seen at least two or three low intensity blasts, for eg: Delhi high court blast, German bakery blast etc.. But none of these cases were closed and investigators are still groping in dark. This just shows that perpetrators of such heinous crimes can easily out smart our intelligence agencies. One of the biggest failure here is that we failed big time in exerting diplomatic pressure on Pakistan, though we have enough evidence against them for the state's involvement in 26/11. I still remember the incident where our foreign affairs minister Mr. SM Krishna was accused of calling Delhi frequently during his visit to Pakistan. I am not sure if it is true or not but the joint press conference clearly showed that our neighbor had a better prepared and confident foreign affairs minster. This was a big diplomatic failure and Mr. Krishna should have been sacked after such a sloppy performance. I don't want to get into corruption discussion. You may be very much aware of that, unless it is totally wrong, which we don't think. A progressive Railway minister loses his job, when he thinks of increasing the railway fare to modernize railways and increase safety measures. That too, it happens when the cost of traveling to railway station from home has increased manifold. May be you disagree but ordinary citizens do feel it with actual market inflation is much more than that of government's data. We all have seen India's dwindling performance in industrial output and it is now alarming. Not to mention some other important issues such as Naxalism, Internal security etc.

I think above points are just tip of the iceberg, and they are good enough to convince any responsible government that they now need to buckle their shoes and get into a professional and accountable lot.

Thanks,