Middle class India has few heroes. Once in a while we find someone. But even before he can settle in, we are disenchanted. Either he fails to live up to our high expectations after the first burst of success, like those guys who win crores on KBC and then vanish into the woodwork. Or worse, he swiftly morphs into monstrous money making machine. Like some of our sportsmen and movie stars.

We like our heroes to excel, stay humble, respect the stature given to them and even if they make lots of money (as some do) not to boast about it in public. A good example is Abdul Kalam. He is a typical middle class icon. So are people like Vishwanathan Anand, Rahul Dravid, Aamir Khan, Mary Kom. Politicians are rare in this pantheon. The middle class has long stopped trusting them.

Luckily, Manmohan Singh was different. He was a respected economist, a finance minister by happenstance who did his job well. No controversy ever singed him. He became Prime Minister by accident, sidestepping all the ugliness, corruption, lies and chicanery that go with everyday politics. It also helped that he was gentle, soft spoken, accessible, and down to earth. For middle class India, he was the perfect choice.

He was not a typical, old style, cow belt neta breathing fire and brimstone, and bursting with clichés about equality and social justice. Singh made no tall promises to Hatao Garibi. Nor did he talk about India Shining even when India was actually shining during his tenure. He was able to artfully manage the contradictions of his coalition and keep it going. Never once did he mention The Foreign Hand. In fact, he reached out his hand in friendship to the world, and our neighbours. The media saw him as a wise and capable man. We were proud of him and even though we knew he was no great achiever, we saw him as a decent guy trying to do a decent day job. To the best of his ability.

That was a while back. Today he leads what is arguably one of the most corrupt, arrogant, inept Governments this nation has ever seen. It appears almost as if he can do no right. Even those who once swore by his personal honesty are no longer all that sure. The latest bunch of scams lie, like a huge dung heap, outside his office and it’s no longer easy to believe he never got a whiff of it.

Singh’s reaction to crises around him is also peculiar. This week’s arrest of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi on grounds of sedition is the most sinister among a series of strange occurrences under his watch. Almost every other morning, some halfwit or the other in his Cabinet gets up and threatens to block the internet or shut down social media. Singh himself recently told a bunch of senior cops to take steps to curb this malaise. What malaise is he talking about? The right to free speech? Twitter has been ordered to take off parody IDs, including those that spoof Singh and the PMO. Never since the Emergency has anyone reacted like this. No cartoons, no jokes, no parodies, no humour. No free press either if his henchmen have their way. Can you imagine the Washington Post being threatened for writing a critical article on him? Earlier, they were furious with TIME for calling him an under achiever.

That the Prime Minister is clueless about the role of social media is obvious to anyone reading his tweets. His must be the single most boring twitter ID in the world, putting out official press releases and texts of his speeches. It shows how totally out of touch he is with the media, how little he understands its role. But the charge of sedition against Trivedi lends a macabre touch. UPA2 has finally crossed the line and Singh’s silence has revealed his true character. It is time someone reminded him that this is India. Free, democratic India. Not Idi Amin’s Uganda nor Gaddafi’s Libya.

The middle class has lost yet another hero. But what’s worse, Manmohan Singh has finally lost the plot.