An Open Letter to Shri.Rahulji

Dear Shri Rahulji,

This is an open letter of unvarnished truths. You may not like it, but you will have to accept it as it is precisely the people’s perception of you.  Modi has had a head start with all his half truths and half lies and pathetic lampoonery of you, your mother, the PM and all the PM’s men. You seem to be a late riser and even the feeble attempts you have made to catch up with Modi have failed.   Look at the comparisons given below- unfavourable but true.

Modi speaks,  Rahul mews.

Modi roars ,Rahul  bleats.

Modi rants, Rahul whines

Modi lies, Rahul is straight

Modi is uncivil, Rahul is refined

Modi regales, Rahul bores

Modi plays to the gallery, Rahul fails to impress

Modi laughs like a hyaena, Rahul has a cherubic smile.

These are facts with no bias for or against either of you.  You two are poles apart. Modi mocks at civility, courteousness and politeness, you conform to conventional standards of manners and behaviour. Modi looks strong and sturdy, you look mild and boyish. Modi exudes strength behind his grey beard, your strength is invisible under your black bristles. Modi is fearsome, you are attractive. Modi arouses strong emotions negative and positive, you arouse pity and a feeling of sadness.

The question is whether the strong man with no finer disposition, refinement and genteelness will be the winner or you with your honesty and mild manners?  What does India want? We have never voted for ruthless men and women- even your grandmother was voted out when she switched on the emergency. But we also do not want any namby-pamby person to preside over our destiny. This is the 21^st century and we in India after almost 65 years of independence yearn for a strong India with a faster rate of development, the fruits of which are not limited to the affluent classes. If you can provide decent living standards to the vast majority of India, we shall certainly vote for you. What can you do for us? I give below my suggestions- gratuitous no doubt- but given out of desperation and fear that the nation may be in the hands of an egoistic, narcissistic, self obsessed individual who has nothing but contempt for everyone around him including all those who fawn upon him.

1. Kindly confine yourself to organizational work which in itself is humungous. With your passion for clean politics, you have a huge responsibility to select worthy candidates who can hold not one but a thousand candles before the blinding sarcasm of Modi.

2. Everyone need not be an orator. You are not cut out for giving public speeches. You are a silent worker, self effacing to the extent possible. Modi says you are born with a golden spoon, but that does not mean you are a silver tongued orator like your grand -father. Leave speech- making to some of your younger colleagues who are more articulate and who by virtue of being in the government have all the facts with them to refute Modi’s gobbledygook.

3. Thank Modi for giving you the compliment that you are born with a golden spoon while commiserating with his poor nativity. The fact that you are born with a golden spoon is that you are one of those blessed children of God to be born into a family that boasts of the Nehrus and the Gandhis(not the clan of the Mahatma). This implies that you have to shoulder the huge responsibility of living up to their ideals. Modi has deftly put you on a pedestal and asks you to live worthy of that status.  Further anyone who commiserates with his own nativity cannot be expected to show genuine leadership. A genuine leader has to be like Obama who never spoke about his origins when he sought the President’s office. He asked his people to vote him in on the strength of his personal credentials that showed him to be a man who thinks with his heart and feels with his mind.

4. Kindly declare that you are not seeking the PM’s chair. If the Congress and its allies are voted back to power, let them decide who they want to lead the country. All sniping about dynastic rule will cease at once. Your mother has been the finest exemplar of successfully guiding coalition politics and being the intermediary between  the people and the government- what they  need and what the government should do. RTI, RTE, Food Security Bil and keeping the coalition group together have been her great contribution to Manmohan Singhji’s government. Please take up the reins that she has allotted to you and form your own NAC with the best Indian minds from India and abroad.

5. You have to make yourself heard through the social media. Since you have honest intentions and desire transparency on all issues, express as often as possible in clear terms what you stand for and what kind of governance you want your party to give to the country.

6. Tell your party cadres that the art of governance must be based on the ethics of governance and that they should make sure that means are as honest as the desired goals.  With your team prepare the Congress manifesto that is visionary and yet practicable, where the goal is to provide food, water, power, health and education of the highest quality to the largest number of the population. On matters of internal and external policy, simply use Polonius advice in Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar:
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.

In all matters, don’t stop with what your party wants to accomplish, but go beyond that to spell out how it can be accomplished.

I may be pardoned if I had exceeded my right as a citizen of the country to proffer you this advice. For me as for many of my countrymen and women, the overarching desire is to restore to our nation  civility, honesty, transparency and good governance that is enshrined in the one word ‘Dharma’ in our sacred texts. If India is to be saved, we need good and blemishless leaders. We do not want demagogues and charlatans to gain power. Kindly select the Best candidates who are intelligent, well read, honest and committed to the service of the nation. The induction of Raghuram Rajan as RBI Governor has been the first step in winning people’s confidence. Get persons like Nandan Nilekeni and even some of the top corporate chiefs to be a part of your team. Chanda Kochhar, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Shobhana Bhartia, Aziz Premji etc will make a fine team. Select such people, get them elected and make them mInisters. India needs such people apart from those like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jairam Ramesh, Sachin Pilot, Milind Deoras, Priya Dutt etc who are already with you.

Build a dream team and bring India back into reckoning as a country whose glorious heritage is not a thing to be displayed in the Museums, but a reality that is to be seen and experienced today.

With best wishes