The Prime Minister is very fond of talking about development all the time.  As if building more shopping malls, airports and highways not to mention smart cities and bullet trains is the be all and end all of development.  What about the human development and more importantly the intellectual development in the country? His ministers and other party leaders continue to express regressive, illiberal and often bordering on misogynistic views in public, which deeply embarrasses and demeans we the people in the eyes of the international community.  But what has the prime minister said or done about it?  His silence on this is more deafening and eloquent than many speeches that he has given so far.  In nearly two and a half years that he's been in office, he has never come out in support of a liberal ethos in society.  I'm not saying that he has actively encouraged the forces of reaction and unreason, but his silence, this almost an Olympian detachment from the cut and thrust of the whole thing doesn't help matters either.  And to think that because of his unquestionable authority both within the party and the government, one word or gesture from him and all the hot heads and extremist forces would have fallen in line.  What do people like us make of this studied silence, that increasingly looks like a tacit approval of all kinds of vigilante groups to bully and harass, and in some extreme cases, even kill those who do not share their narrow minded and bigoted version of this nation.  The idea of material economic advancement and upward social mobility on the one hand, and an egalitarian, open and secular society imbued with a sense of justice on the other, are not mutually exclusive.  Rather they are the different pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle that makes democracy a worthwhile human experience.  The prime minister must speak out and stand on the right side of history.  He should not be running with the hare and hunting with the hound.