My Urgent Message for Prime Minister Narendra Modi

To
Mr. Narendra Modi
Prime Minister of India
New Delhi

From: Rakesh Raman

Dear Mr. Modi,

I am an ordinary man of your country. I have come to know from unreliable sources that you are a man with a great vision. You can provide the right governance to all citizens of India. You can achieve tremendous economic growth with just a wink.

Stock market index will keep soaring up and up under your regime. You have all the ability to help India run on the technology-driven superhighway. You will have the best relations with other countries.

These unreliable sources also tell me that you have a magic panacea to cure all the ills with which over 1 billion people in our country have been suffering for decades.

And I also have come to know that you can tweet over a dozen times a day to highlight all that you do.

But I am not interested in all that I have learned about you because I don’t understand all these bombastic things that you can do, although I believe I am a qualified man.

My hope from you is much simpler than you think. The past few decades of rule in India has almost consumed me. And I feel that the kind of rule that I got from your predecessors can only be termed as tyranny that treated me as a slave in my own country, which I presume is independent now.

While I expect you to save me from the sorry plight in which I have been pushed, here are these 10 tasks that I request you to do before you embark upon your gigantic mission to make India a superpower in the world, as those sources pointed out.

1. Mr. Modi, I go out to buy onions, potatoes, and pulses every week because these are required for my survival. You will be surprised to know that their prices are rising so sharply as if there is no sky. I keep twisting in my bed the whole night thinking about these rising prices. And if I am able to sleep, potatoes appear in my dreams. What should I do Mr. Modi, as I want to sleep only with sweet dreams and not with the dreams of onions and potatoes?

2. I have always heard that water and electricity are the essential services that governments are supposed to provide to the public. I live in India’s capital New Delhi, which is said to be among the most modern cities in the world. But I don’t get water in my home and electricity comes with a dozen interruptions in a day. Can you please do something to provide me drinking water and regular electricity in my home?

3. When I travel in my local area, my bones start squealing with the bumps that they experience. Yes, you guessed it right. This is because of the broken roads which almost dissolve after every rain. Can you please make some waterproof and smooth roads here? This is just to keep my bones intact.

4. Mr. Modi you are being projected as a development czar. I believe you can handle this small thing. I have many friends who are quite educated. Believe me, some of them are more qualified than your ministers. But they are jobless. In frustration and to kill their time, they reluctantly participate in street protests that are frequent in our country. Or they become fans to worthless politicians and participate in their rallies and keep writing “LOL” on their social media pages. Can you arrange some proper jobs for them?

5. I get extremely troubled in extreme winters and summers. Reason: I see men, women, and children sleeping on open pavements and many die in cold and hot weather because they don’t have any place to live. You are a great man, as I have heard. You can save these poor lives, Mr. Modi. And I must tell you than many of these poor people are also your voters.

6. You would have seen small children with rags on their skeleton-like bodies begging on almost every traffic-light halt. Who are they, Mr. Modi? Why do they have to beg? Why can’t they get food? Why can’t they go to schools? You are a big man. Do something good for these small children.

7. Mr. Modi, I don’t want to fall sick because my pains get aggravated in sickness when I think about the private hospital fees. And I fear going to government hospitals because I think I will collapse standing in the long waiting queues. And looking at the crowd of patients, I get the feeling that the whole city has fallen sick. Please give me a proper hospital option that should not cost me an arm and a leg.

8. When I go out of my home, I am never sure I will come back safe because a terror attack or a bomb blast can happen anytime, anywhere. Can you find out who is doing this at such an alarming frequency and save me from such attacks? Hope you will not give the oft-repeated excuse that a neighboring country is responsible for attacks.

9. This is a serious matter, Mr. Modi. The bureaucrats in our government offices treat me like a beggar. They don’t respond to even my genuine requests when I approach them. They are so slow in their work, that they exist only like zombies. While they don’t deserve even a clerical position, they behave like kings and treat the commoners like slaves. Do we really need them? Or can they be tamed?

10. You would agree Mr. Modi that in today’s cutthroat world, you need the domain expertise to handle any enterprise. We can’t run even a street shop without adequate knowledge. But let alone domain knowledge in the departments that they have been asked to manage, I see that your ministers are not even properly educated. Will they be able to manage the affairs of the country? Just saying.

I am confident that you will quickly address all the issues that I have raised. If you could do these simple things as I have requested, you also can tweet about them on Twitter. And those tweets will finally make sense.

By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company

This article is part of our editorial initiative called REAL VOTER that covers political developments in India. Click here to visit REAL VOTER.