An Open Letter to Indian PM Narendra Modi

Dear Narendra,

I’m addressing you with your first name even though you are the Prime Minister of India. This I’m doing after taking a cue from you during Barack’s recent visit to India (Barack, as you very well know, is the President of the United States of America, also known by the quaint acronym POTUS, especially, I’m told, by the legions of security personnel who protect him from known unknowns, unknown knowns or whatever…you get it, right?).

I hope you now have some breathing space from your jet-setting schedule and from entertaining world-renowned guests to tea at expansive lawns, amid the sharing of stories of courage and hardship from your childhood and youth. You, like your bespoke tailoring suit, rock, man! I know this because you yourself have told everyone loud and clear at multiple forums.

And even though you have tried to share your Mann ki Baat (matter from the heart) on state-sponsored radio, something tells me you are hiding a lot deep down your 56-inch chest.

In all possibility, this hiding may be causing you undue pain, pain that is hidden from this cruel world that only knows to laugh at, ridicule and criticize politicians rather than show any empathy.

The other day, I overheard a bunch of wealthy businessmen chuckling at your discomfort. One of them remarked, “Bechara Modi! (Poor Modi) He must be sick and tired of one or the other of the Sangh Parivar making some religiously loaded or divisive comment every now and then. If this goes on, his economic agenda will be derailed sooner than Kejriwal can change his mind!”

As of writing this post, Kejriwal hasn’t but Rahul Gandhi, the scion of India’s long-ruling Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, is probably thinking of changing his mind about something critical in his life—perhaps because he couldn’t change the sinking fortunes of the Congress party in the last general election.

But then I digress, so let’s come back to you…

You apparently set in motion a Modi wave that swept through the poor country that India is. The millions of jobless youth, tens of thousands of entrepreneurs whose businesses were suffering because of UPA-II’s scams and indecisions (and the handful of mega-industrialists who had billions riding on that wave), among countless other voters, brought you and your party to power.

It’s possible that the pain in your chest is a manifestation of all the unfulfilled election promises. And it doesn’t help that your poll prospects from the rest of India (after Delhi) wherever elections are due are seen to be declining.

I know you have tried hard to package old Congress wine of policy schemes and structures into swankier new bottles but, unfortunately, many people want results, not hangovers.

Every now and then, there are comments from one business tycoon or the other, including some international credit rating agency, that the prospects of growth have begun to look good for India. But there are contrary opinions as well.

At least one industry shouldn’t be complaining: media. I have seen your ads on innumerable pages of newspapers, on hoardings all over the city, on so many websites where you would least suspect them to appear, and wherever there has been space to accommodate your well-bearded, avuncular face. And I have not yet reached the state of naiveté where I can believe that the media moguls have given you space for free because they are all Modi bhakts (devotees) or consider splattering those ads an act of patriotism.

Let us get this straight: I’m all for ads because they affect me too, for I’m also part of the media industry. But I think spending on building toilets and recycling waste will be more effective than saying, “Clean India, Clean India!” or “Swachh Bharat, Swachh Bharat!” a hundred thousand times.

Allow me to take just one example: I sometimes use the public loos in Delhi where a lot of swanky urinals were installed in ex-CM Sheila Dixit’s tenure (around Commonwealth Games I think). But hell, there is no water or flushing system and people just keep pissing into the ceramic receptacles ad nauseam.

Would it be possible to divert some of the tidal water from the Modi wave to flush out the filth in the capital’s urinals? (Other cities and towns would be worse off, I presume, and also in need of urgent watery intervention).

Another instance where I can speak from personal experience is the poor state of data connectivity. While your government has quickly launched some websites and your social media machinery is quite active, those gestures do not a Digital India make. I know, I know, other initiatives are in the works—but my fear is that as far as broadband connectivity in India is concerned, it has been always in the works for the past 10-15 years (many other “comparable” nations, meanwhile, have zoomed past India in “digital index”).

Narendra bhai, everyone knows your full name and that you are the PM of India by now. Ab naam ki nahi, kuchh kaam ki baat chalu karo! (Now start talking of the work rather than the name.)

I know you sleep fewer hours than many of your other, able-bodied political brethren. But please remember that hundreds of millions of Indians still sleep on an empty stomach. And those who do get their fill, still have no choice but to empty it in the open.

As of now, shit is one of the biggest things we make in India. The pun, though unfortunate, is intended.

You must fix a lot of things before India can proudly unleash its “lion” out in the world for its roar to be heard.

Maybe you can start by doing more and saying less.

Why Kejriwal is Right about Being Scared

Amid the ton-loads of news and analysis and comments and congratulations and long faces is one from Arvind Kejriwal that says, “I’m scared” of the thumping victory he and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have got in Delhi’s assembly elections today.

Kejriwal has urged his party-workers not to be arrogant. If anyone, it’s he who knows very well that all the tall promises made by AAP to the people of Delhi to come to power are only too difficult to fulfill.

Not that other parties don’t make tall promises or fail in making good on them. But being the poster boy of anti-corruption and cleanliness, Kejriwal and, by extension, AAP will be under intense scrutiny more than any leader or party has ever been.

Today morning, before the results (and congrats and insults) started pouring in, when I asked a fruit seller as to whom did he vote for, his answer was as cryptic as it was practical: “Whoever wins in the election, I have voted for them!”

There is no doubt that Kejriwal and AAP have wised up in a similar fashion since last year’s short-lived fling with power when he was CM for 49 days (though it is rather strange that a so-called rationalist party wants to wait for 4 days to anoint him CM again so it could coincide with Valentine’s Day, the very day last year when Kejriwal relinquished the CM’s post so famously or infamously).

This year they left no stone unturned, to use a stoned-to-death cliché, to make sure more people wear AAP caps and hit the voting machine on the broom button (broom being their election symbol).

That’s why even as the victory bugles are being sounded, the really observant people will be wary of Kejriwal’s and his wide swath of supporters and think: “Kahin phir se topi to nahi pehnai?” (He hasn’t defrauded us of our trust again, has he?)

But there is a strange disconnect I’m feeling this time. While last time, the play was completely on rooting out corruption (with the help of Lokpal Bill, among other vigilant measures)—and there was a visible effect in terms of the average government Joe refraining from asking for bribes or even refusing when voluntarily offered—this time it’s largely been the largesse: “Bijli haaf, paani maaf” (electricity for half the rate, water for free). And then throw in 15 lakh CCTVs for security and widely available Wi-Fi.

As I write these lines, there are blazing horns and hoots of victory by unemployed youth (most likely uneducated, too) parading in cars outside. In all probability, they could do with education and jobs more than being the proud recipients of a freeloader economy (which doesn’t and cannot work anywhere in the world).

What’s more, whether the new victory will result in the same impact of people being fearful of indulging in corruption will soon become clear.

For their part, Narendra Modi and his chief aide Amit Shah were not only arrogant but messed up anything they possibly could. That an I-me-myself Modi strutted around on Rajpath in an offensively expensive suit embroidered with his name this 26 January and whose noises and travels far outweighed his previously expressed intentions or work of nation-building—that, and more, certainly did not help.

Personally, if you ask me, I would have liked both Narendra Modi and Kejriwal to team up against the scam-ridden era of Congress and work together for a truly clean, pro-development India. 

Don’t laugh, if Kiran Bedi, who stood with Kejriwal alongside Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption/Jan Lokpal movement could turn around and join BJP as its CM-candidate, and if Kejriwal, who launched himself into the political sphere by directing his “cough” stance against Sheila Dikshit, could look the other way and set Modi in his sights instead—then, well, then, anything can happen.

Like Kejriwal, I’m scared too—and I have my own reasons. I just hope Kejriwal rises up to the occasion and make a positive difference to all Delhiites.

Here’s my suggested to-do list:

- Quickly launch an investigation into the funding of ALL political parties (including the mysterious donations received by AAP and the cash but undisclosed funds of BJP and Congress).

- Start work on recovering the scam money from the hugely bloated budget of Commonwealth Games.

- Install correct-reading meters (this he will do for sure, I think).

- Put a final stop to the flip-flop on which colonies to authorize and which to raze (so that other political parties cannot offer them authorization next time).

- Put a stop to the practice of paving, re-paving and re-re-paving the already well-paved roads in and around VIP areas; instead try and correctly fill the large potholes on roads in non-VIP areas that are mysteriously stubborn to be repaired.

- Put a stop to the RO water supply mafia that’s not only a nuisance but a bane to the environment—and provide clean water (c’mon, he can charge a bit, okay).

- Focus on solar energy, as Delhi gets abundant sun and the cost of solar is coming down.

- And last but not least, if he really believes most industrialists are corrupt and in cahoots with existing political parties (which most people know is true), put them in jail; and now that AAP is the political party in power in Delhi, stop being in cahoots with *other industrialists* who manage to stay out of jail under his investigative watch.