Dear Mr. Prime Minister

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

You don't know me. Like most of our countrymen, I am just an aam-adami. An aam-adami, using whom you have come to power. An aam-adami towards whom all of your policies are directed or at least you say so.  An aam-adami who seriously doesn't care about politics. An aam-adami who is so busy with his day to day problems that he seldom thinks about you and your policies. Frankly speaking, I seriously don't give a damn about who is in power, who is governing the parliament. Through our (me and people like me) cumulative experience, I can say that whatever you do in the parliament, our life is going to get harder and harder. We have understood this fact and we live by that. 

I never wrote to you before and I am not sure what good this letter is going to do to you. Nevertheless, here I am, writing a letter to you. Now, when I am writing, I will try to collect my thoughts, ideas. I will try to be short and precise but you know that I am not as learned as you are and we aam-adamis have a tendency to be blunt when it comes to express our emotions. So please bear with me. 

When you took power, your credentials and spotless image were publicised far and wide by your party and colleagues. As far as your credentials go, no one has ever doubted you. I can tell you from my experience, people like me will die to get a resume like you. I will also like to say that people like me had accepted your neat and clean image. Although I can't be sure of others, but somehow I could never take you in the role of a prime minister. And now when you are in your second term, my doubts are being validated. 

Mr. Prime Minister, I am sorry to say, but in my opinion you never acted like a prime minister. I don't understand the complexities of a PM office but one thing which I understand and which is one of the basic defining qualities of a Prime Minister is that he should be a leader. He is supposed to lead his government and his country. But from the very first day you never acted like a leader. You were never able to control your colleagues, your party, government and its supporters. In the first term you were with the Left, which in its entire life has done nothing except oppose anything that is good for the aam-adami. I can understand that it was a political compromise but you were supposed to reign them. But like all other instances, you failed. In your own government, Arjun Singh created a controversy which I am sure you didn't approve of, if I am right considering your statement in various newspapers, yet again you failed to control your colleague. You became the first prime minister in whose tenure, there were two poles of power at the national level. It doesn't take a PhD from Oxford to understand that all practical decisions were being taken from 10 Janpath Street. 

Nevertheless, you came to power for the second time. I thank to my countrymen whom I never ever understood. And this time, you thought that you would break all the limits. You came in power using slogans for aam-adami and here again, we are seeing what is happening with the aam-aadami. Some of us forgot what onion tastes like. You had started NRGEA as the flagship programme of your government. But I don't need to say anything, as you must have read the world bank report. So much for aam-adami. But, no this was not enough. We all talk about corruption and to some extent we have accepted that as a part of our life. But I think your government has under taken to break all the limits. I don't need to mention all these scams. We all know. So much for a good, prime minister !

Whenever something happens, your party workers, your colleagues and some of us, start talking about your clean image, your honesty, your credentials, your resume. But Mr. Prime Minister, after all this, I can't say that your image is clean. Mr. Prime Minister, India is a country where having a degree from Oxford doesn't work. A person in a village sitting on a cot, can also give you some good advice regarding politics. So please ask your friends and your colleagues to stop boasting of your credentials and spotless image. Mr, Prime Minister, whenever something happens, I don't want to listen from you that nothing happened under my knowledge. Please, and when I say please, I sincerely say so, start acting like a leader. For gods sake, you are the Prime minister of India. You need to come and take responsibility of your government. You need to be leader. You need to control your colleagues. 

And in the end….Although in Indian politics we always take meaning of opposition in the literal sense, even then I would suggest you just try to learn something from Atal Bihari Bajpayee, Nitish Kumar and your die-hard enemy Narendra Modi. I am not going to say about their policies, what they did for the country. But one thing I can say for sure, they are better leaders than you. It’s not like that they governed with an ideal class of party workers, ministers and colleagues, but they were able to control them. They always came and took responsibility when something happened. They never said, “I wasn't aware of this and I will comment after seeing documents.”

Yours Sincerely,

An aam-adami