Farmer and air force veteran S.S. Randhawa is trying to crack a riddle: Is the Prime Minister trying to wipe out the name of Mohammad bin Tughlak, the sultan of administrative misadventures, with his own actions?

In an open letter written with “due respect and apology”, the 88-year-old retired wing commander has urged Narendra Modi to preserve for posterity the multi-layered barricades at the farmers’ protest sites as a “monument of political insanity”.

Randhawa is not a blind critic of the Prime Minister. He appreciates Modi’s tenacity and actions against Pakistan.

Upset at the manner in which the Centre is handling the farmers’ movement and incapacitated by age from visiting the protest sites, Randhawa has been wondering whether the government is trying to prove to the world that Winston Churchill was right about Indians not being able to govern themselves.

The veteran has addressed the letter to the President as well as the Prime Minister.

Caustically describing the barricades as “state of the art architecture, a technology never ever witnessed by

me in my long life of 88 years”, the octogenarian has asked: “What are we proving to the world? Mr Winston Churchill was right or Mr Clement Attlee was wrong or is it an attempt to obliterate the name of Mohammad Tughlak from the Indian historical annals?”

Later, Randhawa told The Telegraph over the phone: “Dreams are not development. Between the dream and development, there is a process. The Prime Minister tends to skip that and the country suffers.”

Randhawa added: “Look at demonetisation. One evening he announces it and from the very next day, new notifications are issued to deal with the problems that cropped up because the planning and preparation needed was not done in advance. Who suffered? The people and the economy. So also with the farm laws.”

In his letter, Randhawa has urged the farmers and the government not to harm the barricades but preserve them.

“It will be a great tourist attraction and shall also go a long way in educating the generation to come. They must know how indifferent and brutal could an elected government be to the electorate. May God bless us with sense of governance.”