TO MY GREAT GRAND CHILD--WHEN I BECAME THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA!

It is the year 2008. When you read this write-up, we might be around halfway down the 21st century or say it might be between the years 2045-50. Am I right? Anyway does not matter.

Why do I write to you? Well, it is to inform you as to how I had nearly changed the course of the Indian society you live in or at least identify with? To be very frank, I had almost pulled it out of the abyss it had got into and had a vision to give it new direction.

I am not very sure whether you are an Indian citizen or US. Your grandfather had left India’s shores in the year 2006 AD because he found there were no opportunities for talent and merit, then. He had hated this kind of uncertain, unequal and imbalanced approach at the national level. He was bubbling with enthusiasm to grow in life, wanted to race to sky in shortest possible time. He had no chance to make it here, so he left. He could do so but I could not. The difference was my emotional attachment with this soil. I was the son of a farmer; he was the son of a senior army officer---the difference in status made all the difference. I resolved to stay and fight it on.

But India, then, was a mass of incompetent, inefficient corrupt, scandalous, greedy and immoral leaders, whether political, regional, religious, administrative or whatever walk of life. India was too engrossed with trivial matters because focus was on individual identities. Political parties to religions to regions—every thing had become personal fiefdom of a few individuals. And these one percent people with personal agendas decided the fate of other 99 percent.

There was time in 1992 that India had to fly all its gold to UK to mortgage it to take loans to get out of the murky financial state, India had landed in due to years of faulty Economic planning. A man called Man Mohan Singh rose phoenix like from the economic ruins and put us on a liberal growth and development. Over the years, the growth became lopsided, the rich became richer and poor became poorest. A nation of 1160 million people had become a real mess within 15 years of liberalization. Conditions like French revolution of 1789 had been created.

Everywhere there was noise of reservation based on religion, caste and region. There were unwanted debates on non-issues like secularism, religion, freedom liberty, media rights, democracy, judicial corruption, political indifference. Violence and corruption had reached a level of ‘no-return’. Terrorism and militancy had raised inexorable head. Every region, religion and community was singing its own songs. In this INDIA hardly any INDIAN lived.

You will wonder why? My answer is simple. No one was interested in India and Indianess. We were Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. If this was not adequate, we divided ourselves into Punjabis, Tamils, Marathas, Guajarati, Kashmiris, Asamese, Nagas, Biharis, Mizos, Manipuris, Bengalis, Sikkimese, Rajsthanis and what not. We failed to identify ourselves with India. This was so both with educated and illiterate. In fact educated elite identified itself more with religious, regional and lingual identities. A Raj Thakre here and Mehbooba Mufti there, would start an agitation either on what language people should speak in a particular region or why a piece of land should not be given to some community. No one was interested in the real problems of the people. THE EDUCATED ELITE HAD MISGUIDED THEIR COMMUNITIES, CASTES, RELIGIONS, REGIONS and LINGUAL FRATENITIES in ORDER TO RETAIN THEIR GRIPS ON THEM. We know from our history that it was the biggest bane of Indian society to allow itself to be emotionally exploited on these grounds. We were thus a nation waiting to be fragmented when I stepped in.

The World Bank report that year had stated that 42 percent Indians live on Rs 30 a day. It is a laughable sum for you today, because you might be getting a pocket money of rupees 30/- second. I am sure India in your times must be a prosperous nation. But it was ranked 94th poor country in my times. It was no where in sports. The nation went mad with celebrations after three of its people had won three medals in Beijing Olympics. Imagine 1.16 billion people and three medals. Even Jamaica was miles ahead. It is not even one-tenth of India in size and population.

All the same, there was no dearth of talents and ideas in my times. You needed a person who could divert the attention of the nation from the frivolous fights. You needed a strong man—almost a dictator to push forward his selfless agenda ruthlessly, no matter, if some genuine people suffer. This was the premium nation had to pay for its development and growth at par with its biggest competitor of your times, i.e. People Republic of China. They were many years ahead of us and they had proved it in the BEIJING OLYMPICS they had organized in 2008. It had happened because the priority and focus of Chinese leadership was on growth, development and progress, through education, safety and security. They had said Liberty and democracy can be introduced in a controlled manner. I tell you, in the year2008, USA the SUPREME POWER of the world, then if at all was scared of competition it was China. All others, including India, were its “Surrogates”.

Fortunately, for India, a unique experiment was carried out by Election Commission of India. After the UPA government of Man Mohan Singh decided to have general elections, the commission realized that the cost of elections was unbearable for India. The reason was the uncertainty after the elections. Some concerned people raised hue and cry.

One of the front runners in that lot of concerned people was a patriotic Indian, temporarily settled and working in New York, USA. A son of a great teacher and philosopher, he had strong in built moral qualities. I do not know his real name because he never showed up after that. His pen name was Ramesh 007. He made a suggestion to election commission that voting be conducted on- line. This idea was supported by many right thinking people and I also jumped in.

After great deliberations, Election Commission Of India, decided to hold direct on-line elections for the Prime Minister. A web site, called SULEKHA. COM was given this task. This had millions of Indians as its on-line menbers world wide. I won’t be surprised, if the membership had touched almost 4-500 millions. If this site is still there, check records with its management. I was member of this site. I used to blog there—not very popular because I was a straight forward and too out- spoken to be diplomatic. I could annoy friends when it came to speaking the truth. I never minced my words when pointing out the flaws in the flimsy poems of the people. I was overly critical. People say VIRGOS are like this. May be, my army background, also, prevented me from putting up an act.

Then, one day your great grand ma got annoyed on this because she felt I did not know how to appreciate people. She reminded me that I suffered from HALO EFFECT. It meant that I used to only look up to those people and appreciate those who exhibited similar views and sentiments. She forcefully told me that FIVE FINGERS were not equal. To say the least, I left writing poetry and stopped commenting on poets. If I did, I had to be there only with positive remarks, otherwise quietly scoot.

Anyway, I too gave my name as a candidate for election to the prime ministership. Surprisingly, when the election was held on line, the Sulekha population voted heavily in my favour. I was stunned, when results were announced. I was declared winner to be the Prime Minister of India. Luckily, I was free to choose my own ministers. I was going to be the strongest Prime Minister without any pulls and pressures of party politics. This was the turning point in the political history of India.

I was to take over with effect from October 01, 2008. I sat down to work out my priorities and remain focused on the. Prior to elections, I had been debating with my self on the real problems of India. My brainstorming with self and your great grand ma narrowed down my priorities. My quest ended with just an acronym of five words, i.e. SPICE. It represented Security (S), Population growth (P), Identity crisis (I), Government Controls (c) and lack of Education (E). I could reduce and relate all other problems to this denominator. Corruption, Violence, Terrorism, Insurgency, Communal riots, Regionalism, Lingual Upsurge and Religious Aggressiveness---all could be controlled if we tackled SPICE with earnest zeal and sincere purpose. These were my commandments of INDIA’s MARCH towards, growth, progress, development safety, security and INDIANISATION. I append them in the following paragraphs.

Security. It must be noted that nothing can be done unless there is peace and harmony. Growth and development can take place only if our homes are safe and secure. Today, danger to our security is more from internal foes, then external foes. We have to think of internal security. We have a large number of cleavages in terms of regional, communal, religious, lingual and ethnical troughs, which are vulnerable points for exploitation by our enemies today and in the future. I must act on two fronts of external threat and internal threat. Some of the measures I had planned to introduce were:-

-Vitalize and reorganize my internal security forces. We might have to have a rethink on the reorganization of state police mechanism to enable it to tackle violence, riots and terrorism, whether external or internal. Internal security force must be an all India force. Its members must be all India cadres. Each district of India should have a battalion of 1000 people placed along with the district police.

-Law and order must not be exclusively state subject. The power of the police should be cut down to only investigation and filing of criminal complaints. It must be made mandatory for each police station to file FIR in every case. The FIR lodging procedures must be simplified.

-Intelligence agencies be made more responsive to the modern day problems of violence, riots and terrorism. There should be only one agency controlling all kind of intelligence in the state.

-External security force be trimmed and made capable of fighting SMART and DESIGNER WARS. In so doing there is a requirement of greatest coordination amongst three forces. Thus the post of CDS (Chief of Defence Staff—A five star general) be created to closely and intimately control Army, navy and air force.

-Defence ministry be bifurcated into two wings i.e. IS (Internal Security) wing and ES (external security) Wing. Each wing must be placed under a minister of state for defence.

-CORRUPT and DERELICTING public servants. To remove insecurity from the public minds, public servants, including MLAs & MPS were to be summarily dismissed if found indulging in corrupt practices. All Public servants were asked to file annual return on purchase of items worth Rs 20,000 or more. Non-filing will invite not only confiscation but also dismissal.

-Media to be made responsible and partner in nation building. They will be debarred from propping up criminals and terrorists in the name of freedom of speech. There will be severe punishments.

Population Control This is the biggest bugbear of India. It is not getting any attention. Education has not been able to reduce the growth. It is really exploding. All the progress India makes is eaten up by its rising waves. It has to be checked, if need be forcibly. I am votary to what Sanjay Gandhi had thought of it some 33 years back. His point is as valid now as it was then. Unfortunately, some over jealous bureaucrats and politicians made a mess of his BEAUTIFUL POINT. Time has come when we have to launch ONE CHILD NORM forcibly. We will give incentives to those who have only one child. We will punish those who have more than one child. CARROT & STICK policy is needed to tackle this. This must be the national priority. Time had come for us to take HARSH measures as appended below:-

-Incentives in the form of free education up to post graduation.

-Accelerated Promotion will be given to those who are childless for first five

years of marriage. Double promotion to those who remain childless for 15 years of

marriage.

-Punitive actions in the form of loss of job, demotion and denial of

reservation in schools, colleges and government jobs.

-A Child tax be levied on those who have more than one child.

-Close monitor of population at district level. incentive to bureaucrats.

Identity Crisis. This is another major area I had planned to concentrate. I had simply planned to ban carrying of religions and regions on our sleeves. I had resolved to tell everyone that as long as I were the PRIME MINISTER, only Indians would live in India. All those with PAN-NATIONAL identities were welcome to leave for the nations, they adore. I had full scheme to ban all Govt officials, whether state or Central, from attending any religious and regional functions. All those being caught were to be summarily dismissed. The mention of religion and caste on any official documents was to be banned. I had visualised following stiff measures:-

-Any Indian can buy property anywhere in the country. All special laws would be withdrawn—such as hill states denying land to outsiders; some state not allowing purchase of agricultural land, if one was not a farmer. I had also decided to abrogate article 370. Some leaders from Kashmir would be rounded before hand and sent into IGNONIMITY for a year. All second rung leaders were also to be arrested and sent to places, their forefathers had not visited. Kashmir will squeak for few days and then quite will flow the VITSTA RIVER (Jhelum) for rest of my tenure. I will never hear those vociferous Kashmir’s ISI agents, masquerading as leaders. I had learnt this from Sh Beant Singh and Hiteshwar Saikia, both chief Ministers of their states, Punjab and Assam respectively in the early 90’s. After their death, India never had a nationalistic leader of their stature.

-ONE COUNTRY ONE LAW. India is for Indians. Call it secular or Non-secular but there will be only one law for everyone—whatever religion or region one belongs to. I had planned to this incorporate in the constitution. I had already thought of abrogating special privileges to various states. All cases of reservations on caste, creed and backwardness were to be considered keeping in mind population law. I will stop the open ending philosophy of reservation. I will fix the time of five years. No more reservation, thereafter as we were having free and compulsory education up to graduation level.

-Identity number I had planned to give an identity number to each Indian. This would be his real identity. This number would be given at the time of birth registration and it will continue through out one’s life. It would have replaced religion and caste based names ultimately. This would have helped ending the caste, creed and religious divisions. This number had Mohalla/street/Town-city-village/district/state and 16 digits numerical number. It would have REPLACED INDIVIDUAL NAMES—the root cause of all our problems which keep CASTE, CREED and RELIGION publically alive. It might take some time in implementation. There are bureaucratic and vested interest objections. But I will push through if I am elected for one more tenure.

Government Controls The main reason for corruption is when powers are centered in some persons. I intend to reduce government intervention and controls in all spheres. We have had enough of this BUREAUCRATIC-CONTRACTOR- POLITICIAN nexus. More controls help only some people. Government will oversee and not get involved in managing things. We will disinvest freely. I will study more after I take over and then see what else can be done.

Education It will be free for everyone up to graduation level except professional education. The professional education will begin only after normal graduation. We want Indians to be well aware of what a graduate ought to know. There will be one syllabus for the whole country. It will be standardized. I will discourage Private schools. All religious schools and institutes will be closed. If they want to have community -specific schools, they will provide free education as per the standardized syllabus. Admissions will have to be given to all students without caste, creed and religious preferences. There will be severe punishments for drop outs and also for the parents.

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Dear Great grand child,
I wrote this letter before I was slated to take over as Prime Minister. I was all set mentally and prepared to do my duty earnestly. So, I waited anxiously. But, you see the time to take over never came. Why? Because your ‘great grand ma’ had woken me up from my sleep. And I was disturbed. I got up and came to my lap top. I rewrote whatever I had written to you in my dream and I am now posting it as a blog on SULEKHA BLOGS. Perhaps, one day you might read it. Won’t you dear, 8/B/N/P 9988776655443322 , my great grand child?