I should have written a thank you note for Manmohan Singh the day he announced that he
was not in the race of trying to be the PM for the 3rd time .But I
chose to hold it till today because tomorrow the curtain will officially come
down on his government .Even in the “rarest of rare” cases if the Congress wins
–he will not be the PM .The knives are already out and some of his best friends
are ready to plunge the knife into a ageing body and blame him for everything
that happened in the last few years .Yes –he must take the responsibility of
not being tough on crooks who looted the country of its spectrum and coal .He
must also be blamed for being soft on a extremely slimy Railway Minister who
took bribes through his nephews and relatives to sell high posts.He must take
the blame for the fall in the rate of the rupee and for Indias growth rate .He
should have quit when a young bearded handsome scion ,walked into a Press
Conference with a sycophant in tow ,rolled up his sleeves and tore a piece of
paper saying it was “non sense”.He should have immediately quit –even though he was in the USA .But those are the flip side
of the coin .
Thank you Sir for maintaining decorum and never being
unparliamenatry .Thanking you Sir for making me always feel proud that I also
belonged to the same tribe as you –a teacher .Thank you for speaking sense
every time you spoke and reminding me that it is not how much you speak but
what you speak that matters .Each word of yours was loaded and well thought out
.Thank you for personally being honest to a fault and to your nails .Thank you
for making every Indian have a choice of cars beyond the Ambassador ,Fiat and
the Standard Herald .Thank you Sir for giving us fabulous telephony ,excellent
highways ,Pepsi ,Coke ,Pizza Hut ,Costa Coffee –everything we used to only see and get when
we travelled abroad . Thank you for opening up Airlines that were so competitive that I haven’t
travelled in trains and buses for years now .Thank you bringing television into
a remote village in Himachal where kids sit around and watch IPL matches and
hear politicians bark and snipe at you .Thank you for the RTI and the UID .And
thank you for allowing me to leave home everyday with a empty purse because I
have a ATM Card which I can swipe at thousands of ATMs .Its a amazing and mind boggling achievement which only a very ungrateful or
a ill informed human being can ignore .I
thank God that you were my Prime Minister because you made life happier and easier for me .I
don’t know what historians will write about you .I suspect that they will
remember tha bad things that happened in your times .I quote from Julius Caesar
,Shakespeares great play
“The
evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones,”
.But that is what
historians may write .Personally I would like to quote this from the same novel
His life was gentle, and the
elements so mixed in him that Nature might
stand up and say to all the world, “This was a man.”
Thank you Sir for getting India out
of the clutches of a backward looking economy and putting it on the world map
as a strong global and envied nation .And thank you for making it so
conveinient for me to buy my Levis
,Raybans and Brut without begging others to get it from abroad .
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