Parliament's just-concluded monsoon session was a mix of the good, the bad and the indifferent, its sole bright spot being the passage of the long-simmering GST Bill, counterpointed by blinkered statements by Home Minister Rajnath Singh such as: "Let us join hands to make Kashmir a heaven."
The prime minister will be scribbling - if not scrabbling -hard for some new points that could find purchase in his Red Fort address on Monday. That he's inviting suggestions from the public on what to say - another vaunted example of e-governance - also suggests that his bounce to the ramparts is beginning to drag. If the life of elected leaders is measured in five-year terms, Narendra Modi is hitting midlife blues.
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Rapists stalk the big-city and small-town streets. As for millions of bank accounts for the poor, or putting Rs 15,000 in every pocket by bringing back black money stashed abroad, what the public sees is public sector banks groaning under corporate debt and bailed out by thousands of crores of taxpayers' money. Big defaulters like Vijay Mallya and Subrata Roy are abroad, or out on bail, but their allegedly ill-gotten millions are a long way from being reclaimed.
The government's one effort to clean up the black-money economy is hurting a major growth area - the housing and real estate market - so hard that it is now a source of widespread middle-class angst. Property prices have plunged, the worst depreciation of up to 30 per cent occurring in metropolitan suburbs and smaller cities. For most homeowners a roof to call their own is their primary investment and lifetime cushion. To see this saving being eroded is cause for anxiety and alienation.
Instead the national discourse has been hijacked by cow vigilantes and beef bans, flimsy pretexts for unabated violence by Hindu zealots against Dalits and Muslims. For someone adept at the use of social media and the power of gratuitous one-on-one chitchats, Mr Modi's responses to such atrocities have been far from instantaneous. When they have come - as at the town hall meet - they are delayed, defensive and overly dramatic. "Shoot me if you want but not my Dalit brothers," he exhorted at the prospect of huge collateral damage in three big state elections that loom next year.
But Narendra Modi, the new-found saviour of Dalits, is not the same as the Rock Star Modi of performance arenas like Madison Square Garden and Wembley Stadium of yore. He has put his foreign jaunts on pause. It has been sombrely announced that he will not be attending the UN General Assembly next month but will send his popular foreign minister (whose tweets on broken refrigerators and cars are funnier because they are considered and concise).
In one respect Mr Modi is a victim of his make-believe world - the virtual reality of the digital world which enforces a false intimacy but in fact enlarges the distance between leader and elector.
Since he's invited the public for suggestions for his Red Fort speech, here are my two-paise bits. Don't make it long and cut out the histrionics. Don't offer more schemes, but solutions. Be graceful about your government's errors and shortcomings. Forget the fancy turbans and flourishes. It's time to batten down the hatches and face up to midlife blues.