Its time to go Mr Prime Minister
Dear
Prime Minister,
In Hindu tradition and culture the concept of
renunciation has always been valued more than the idea of acquisition, and even
though you may not accept this for fear of offending your party's minority vote
bank, let me allay your fears by reminding you that this is something preached
by the Abrahamic religions also.
I would, therefore, urge you to seriously consider this option in your own
interest as well as in the larger interest of this unfortunate country.
The government headed by you has already taken the country back to 1990 in
sheer economic terms, and in terms of other social and public values we have
reached the nadir of the Dark Ages.
The country had great
hopes from you when it voted you to power in 2004, and even higher expectations
when it renewed your mandate in 2009 after your sterling display of vision and
courage in the nuclear deal. But you only flattered to deceive, and for reasons
which are now becoming obvious, relinquished any pretense of leadership or
governance.
A big ship needs a strong hand at the rudder-your hand- but you have handed it
over to a motley crew of rank opportunists and faceless lascars who can only
run it aground.
You were never a politician- a positive for most of the voters – and the two
qualities that made us repose our trust in you were your honesty and your
acknowledged status as an eminent economist. Today, both lie in tatters- you
have betrayed our trust, not substantially but wholly, and therefore you must
go.
Time to go Mr Prime Minister
Honesty is not divisible, and for those who
exercise power there can be no nuances between personal honesty and public honesty.
A person who allows others to loot cannot be honest. A Manager who does not
raise his voice when illegalities are being committed by his subordinates
cannot be honest.
A law maker who protects criminals cannot be honest. And a Prime
Minister who does all this simply to remain in power cannot be honest. Your
honesty has already cost the country dearly, Mr. Prime Minister, and we cannot
sustain this cost any longer.
Your reputation as an
economist may still follow you to Harvard or to the LSE after your retirement,
but in this country its devaluation is proportionate to the devaluation of the
Indian rupee. Where did you lose the plot?
You had everything going for you when you took over in 2004– an economy growing
at 8-9%, a Current Account SURPLUS of US$ 10.56 billion, Foreign Exchange
reserves in excess of US$ 400 billion, a comfortable net INFLOW of Foreign
Direct Investment.
After nine years of your being at the helm, the growth rate is
down to between 5% and 6% and falling, the Current Account has gone into a
DEFICIT of US$ 20 billion and increasing, Foreign Exchange reserves are down to
seven months import and depleting, the Fiscal Deficit is going to hit 6%,
Foreign Exchange reserves are down to US $ 200 billions (with repayments of US$
150 due before March 2014), there is a net OUTFLOW of FDI funds to the tune of
almost US$ 7-10 billions every month.
The Rupee has reached an exchange rate of 65
to the dollar. Nobody believes Mr. Chidambaram anymore, the RBI Governor can
only hyper-ventilate, and you, of course, continue to maintain your sphinx-like
silence.
In the meantime inflation continues unabated, jobs are being lost by the
millions ( unemployment actually rose by 2% between July 2011 and June 2012),
Indian industry prefers to take its money abroad, infrastructure projects
languish somewhere between Messers Jaiswal, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Montek
Singh Ahluwalia, and a litre of cooking oil now costs more than two litres of
beer! (Can you imagine, Mr. Prime Minister, what a field day Marie Antoinette
would have had with this?!).
And this is at the precise time when the rest of the world is coming out of its
downturn! No, sir, you and your band of forty thieves have been so busy with
your petty politicking, with ensuring the survival of a particular dynasty,
securing the financial well being of future generations of your party
colleagues and allies, dividing communities and classes, that you have had no
time for planning and taking decisions.
The only decisions you HAVE taken boggle the
mind. We are already spending 75000 crores every year on our Public Distribution
System: every single survey indicates that at least 40% of this, or 30000
crores is siphoned off by politicians, bureaucrats and middle-men. And now your
govt. is determined to pour another 50000 crores into this bottomless pit
through the Food Security Act! What for?
The BPL( Below Poverty Line) families and the
Antyodaya (poorest of the poor) families are already covered under the existing
PDS-the FSA will make no difference to them. Govt.’s own figures state that
only 27% of our population is now below the poverty line; why then do you want
to bring 67% of the population under the FSA, and spend a whopping 50000 crore
on people who do not deserve this largesse?
And that too at a time when you have no money for infrastructure development or
health and education( in both of which we now lag behind even Sri Lanka and
Bangladesh!). Is it worth destroying a country just so your motley crew can win
another election? Is this honesty, Mr. Prime Minister?
Had it been only the economic downturn we could perhaps have been more
generous. For economics, as we all know, is not only a dismal science, it is
also an uncertain one: as they say, even if one were to lay down all economists
end to end, we still wouldn't reach a conclusion!
After all, if Mr. Amartya Sen and Mr. Bhagwati cannot agree on what is good for
India we can hardly expect you to have the answer. No sir, the economics is
only a part of the mess: let me recount what the others are.
You have systematically sought to destroy every fiber of the democratic fabric
of this nation. Constitutional authorities have been attacked publicly by your
minions and sought to be humiliated at every turn: remember the diatribes
against Vinod Rai and the Central Information Commissioner?
Statutory authorities like the CBI and the office of the Attorney General have
been subverted and made to fall in line, your party’s line. Your oath of office
demanded that you protect them, but you remained mute, as is your wont.
You have even done the unthinkable: set the Intelligence Bureau against the
CBI, ensuring for ever that our premier intelligence agency will never
cooperate with our premier criminal investigating agency- every terrorist,
insurgent and crooks of all assorted types must be lining up outside Teksons to
buy ” thank you” cards for you!
Such is your hubris that you have shown contempt for the orders of the Supreme
Court even. The courts judgments, instead of being respected and seen as a
matter for serious contemplation, are publicly criticised and sought to be
by-passed by the collation of a consensus of those affected by the judgments
(!) and a brute legislative majority.
So criminals can continue in Parliament. Merit will find no place in the
selection of Doctors (at the senior most, Professor, level) even in Super
specialty disciplines; minorities will get reservations in government jobs even
though the Constitution forbids it.
This lack of respect for the final arbiter of the Constitution and the law is
not only breeding a competitive defiance of the Court among other political
parties but is also setting the stage for a show down with the judiciary a-la
Pakistan and other banana republics.
You behave as if the Opposition is not part of the democratic process, that it
is a nuisance that is best ignored; consequently, all communication between the
two has now snapped, and the nation is a helpless witness to a Parliament that
resembles a rugby locker room in both language and action and is in a permanent
state of adjournment.
All parties are to blame for this, of course, but it is your party which laid
down the rules of engagement. By refusing to walk the extra mile to accommodate
even the legitimate demands of the Opposition, and by sabotaging time and again
the Committees of Parliament, you have eviscerated this vital organ of
democracy which under you has become as vestigious and irrelevant as your
appendix.
Practically no legislative work has been done in the last two years: there are
116 bills pending in both Houses, of which 19 and 21 relate to financial and
educational reforms, respectively, two of the areas that need immediate
attention.
But your lack of concern is matched only by your shocking sense of priorities:
instead of trying to push these bills, you have instead chosen to concentrate
your fading energies on two other amendments that can only make politics
murkier and more criminalised: removing the disqualification of convicted
legislators, and exempting political parties from the RTI Act!
Perhaps the biggest price for your incompetence and your colleagues venality
is being paid by our defense forces: all three are many years behind in terms
of armaments and weaponry (because another ” honest” Minister, Mr. Antony,
will neither effect purchases from abroad nor allow FDI in defense production)
and their very capacity to defend the country has been seriously eroded.
Who will defend our borders in such a scenario, Mr. Prime Minister- the lethal
barbs of Mr. Manish Tewari, or the boomerangs of Mr. Digvijay Singh or the IEDs
of Mr. Mani Shankar Iyer? Even worse, you have demoralized our armed forces by
the constant interference of your Ministry and completely taken away their
operational and tactical independence.
A succession of retired Army commanders have said so in recent times and the
pusillanimous approach of our troops in response to violations of the LOC
testify to this. (Of course, these same Army Commanders who have suddenly found
their conscience and their voice also need to explain why they didn't defend
their operational independence more vigorously when they were enjoying the
perks of their office!).
Under you we have become a whining nation- we whine when Pakistani troops shoot
our soldiers, we whine when Chinese troops camp on our territory for weeks on
end, we whine when Italian marines shoot our sailors, we whine when the Sri
Lanka navy arrests our fishermen, we whine when our ex-President is frisked at
an American airport.
Under you a once-proud nation is being kicked around by even a Maldives or a
Bhutan. What in God’s name have you done to our image?
In communal terms we have always been a fractured society. But true leaders
have in the past tried to bridge these fissures. To you, however, will go the
dubious credit of widening and deepening these cracks between communities and
castes.
In order to survive, your party has countenanced the retrograde decisions of
allies that can only raise the confrontational pitch: earmarking of state
budgets for a religious minority, reservations in jobs for the same community
(which goes against the express provisions of our Constitution), reservations
in promotions (which has been struck down by the courts), setting up of a
central Commission to review the (criminal) cases of suspects of one community
only.
It is your party which has put communalism at the center of the campaign for
next year’s election, not the BJP or Mr. Modi. The former has consciously
downplayed the Ram Mandir issue, and Modi had made it clear that development
was going to be his plank. But this did not suit you since your party couldn’t
possibly debate him on this plank, what with your miserable record of the last
five years.
So you deliberately inserted the communal element, as did your allies, by
harping only on the 2002 Gujarat riots. To his credit, Mr. Modi has so far not
agreed to stoop so low, and I do not think your strategy will work.
But you have in the process vitiated the atmosphere for a long time to come,
reopened old wounds that were beginning to heal, and provided a legitimate
space for hot heads on both sides of the divide.
How much damage to the country is one Parliamentary seat worth, Mr. Prime
Minister? How many more Partitions will you recreate to satisfy your party’s
lust for power?
Your opportunistic creation of Telangana has sown the seeds of disputes and
blood-letting in all parts of the country that will sorely test the federal
integrity of our country for many years to come. There are twenty one more
statehood specters waiting in the wings and by the time they are exorcised we
may have ceased to exist as one nation.
Do I need to refer to the endemic corruption that your government has been
indulging in these last ten years? And to your pathetic attempts to distance
yourself from them, even though it is gradually becoming clearer with each
passing day that you were aware of what was happening and did nothing to stop
it? Why?
The quality of honesty, like that of mercy, cannot be strained: one cannot be
honest and yet knowingly allow dishonesty on one’s watch.
Even worse, your increasing brazenness in the face of evidence against you
boggles the mind: the Minister who doctored the Coalgate report has been made
Special Envoy to Japan, a Minister whose nephew sold posts in The Railways for
crores has not even been named in the charge sheet, the Minister on whose watch
files relating to YOUR period of the coal scam have gone missing continues to
bestride Shastri Bhavan like a colossus.
Who is this Faustian devil you have sold your
soul to, Mr. Prime Minister?
Your deafening silence on all these matters-you have spoken in both houses of
Parliament only fifty times in ten years-defies logic and conventional wisdom.
And that leads me to speculate whether we are underestimating you.
Is there, after all, a method in your madness? Could it be that you are
reconciled to losing the next elections and are therefore deliberately implementing
a scorched earth policy?
That you will leave behind as a legacy for the next government an India that is
bankrupt, ungovernable, riven by caste and communal conflicts, all its
institutions destroyed?
An India that will soon be on its knees, begging for your party- the lone
horseman riding in from the sunset, in Mr. Rahul Gandhi’s words, don’t
forget-to take over the reins again, and save the country from perdition? But I
forget, you never speak- so we’ll never know till the horseman is upon us.
Mr. Prime Minister, your party has stripped this country like a cloud of
locusts. You have sown every type of poisonous seed known to your ilk and we
shall be reaping the bitter harvest for many years hence. You have engendered
an atmosphere of uncertainty,venality, indecision, communalism, opportunism,
criminalisation and defiance of constitutional and statutory institutions which
cannot be allowed to continue, for that way lies certain disaster.
Elections are nine months’ hence but we cannot allow this conception to come to
full term: the seed sown by you can only destroy this country and must be
aborted. The time has come for you to go, Mr. Prime Minister, and to go
immediately.
Call for elections now, end the uncertainty, let us get on with our lives, give
this country a chance to redeem itself. Do one last service to this nation,
sir- stand not upon the order of your going, but go!
With best wishes,
Your’s sincerely,
A VOTING STATISTIC
The author retired from the Indian Administrative Service in December 2010.
He is a keen environmentalist and loves the mountains- he has made them his
home.
