Shashi Tharoor, currently the Minister of State for External Affairs, has shown extreme adeptness in creating national headlines for himself. One might add as an afterthought, for all the wrong reasons. First of all, it was his decision to quit the United Nations (after he lost the high-pitched battle for the post of the Secretary General) and to contest the 2009 Indian General Elections on a Congress Party ticket from the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency where he was dubbed as an outsider by the Leftists and other "sons-of-the-soil". The allegation was levelled against him on the ground that he had never lived in Thiruvananthapuram and, until very recently, did not even own a house there. He "nativized" himself adequately by shedding the three-piece suits of a diplomat and by wearing a loose white shirt on a spotlessly clean dhoti. The effect was completed with a tricolour angavastram, proclaiming his patriotism and his loyalty to the Congress Party, perching delicately on his shoulders. The TV news channels showed him dabbing his heavily perspiring face with the ends of the angavastram every now and then during the election campaign. I was extremely relieved to note that he did not kilt up his dhoti like other members of his entourage. Defeating all obstacles, negative publicity, and the scorching Travancore heat, he won the seat and went to New Delhi as a first-time parliamentarian. His formidable reputation as a writer and a diplomat ensured him a ministerial berth in the Central Government.
Now, as we all know, it is difficult to find proper government lodging in the national capital at any given point of time. Retired or trashed public servants find it ever so difficult, despite repeated reminders from the Estate Department of the Urban Development Ministry, to vacate the comfortable white-coloured bungalows hidden behind the tree-lined avenues of Luyten's Delhi. So, given the state of affairs, where could Tharoor have gone? Accustomed to world-class comforts of living he moved into a suite in a five star hotel. His immediate boss, Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna, too had to go for such an arrangement. When they were cosily housed in their hotel suites, outside --- in the vast plain fields of India --- drought struck. Standing crops wilted away and agricultural production ran a downward course. The Indian Economy, already reeling from the impact of last year's global recession, went for a toss.
Presiding over the Indian Economy is the erstwhile pipe-smoking barrister from Calcutta and Congress Party's man of all seasons, Pranab Mukherjee. Resourceful as ever he launched the Government of India's austerity drive with the full-hearted support of the lady of 10 Janpath. The two started flying out as economy class passengers. They asked other ministers to follow suit. Initially there was some grumbling but ultimately their example proved to be too inspiring to be ignored. Even Sharad Pawar fell in fine. But nothing could ever miss the hawkish eyes of the Finance Minister. In his Bengali-accented English he roundly ticked off Krishna and Tharoor for living in such pomp and grandeur. They pleaded that they were not spending public money but that they were digging into the enormously fat bank balance of their own. Mukherjee wasn't impressed. Knowing pretty well that adamancy could cost them their jobs, they meekly checked out of their hotel rooms. The hotel staff and management must have shed buckets of tears on their departure. But we don't as yet know their part of the story.
Anyhow, Tharoor was asked to stay at Kerala Bhawan but he stubbornly refused. Being a self-respecting and self-financing man he couldn't degrade himself any further. After all, hadn't anybody heard the Mahatma Gandhi story that Sarojini Naidu had related? It cost the Congress Party and the Colonial British Government in India a fortune to keep Gandhi in poverty. But unlike Tharoor the men and the women in positions of power and authority hardly read books. They are only capable of shooting from the mouth. A fresh recruit into Indian politics Tharoor knows better. He doesn't shoot from his mouth unnecessarily; he has a stronger weapon, he writes, er.., he rather "tweets". The problem with writing in social-networking sites is that you can be as frank as possible. You can't be too formal or politically correct there; the medium simply doesn't permit it. You will be called a bore and your friends would pay little attention to what you are saying. So he ridiculed the austerity drive undertaken by his senior colleagues in the government in no uncertain terms and referred to economy class passengers, deridingly enough, as "cattle class". This is unpardonable and it appears to me that by using such an expression he has animalized the middle class Indians. Mr. Tharoor, middle class Indians are not bovine, you know!
If he thought such an utterance would go unnoticed, I am tempted to say he doesn't know the ABC of politics. He couldn't or shouldn't have imagined that such pronouncements would be accepted as poetic license. Even leaders from his own party bayed for his blood. The outrage he had created was too much. The Prime Minister himself had to step in to control the damage. Tharoor rushed to meet the Prime Minister, Congress President and Finance Minister to explain what he actually meant by that remark. Some news reports suggest that he apologized, but I can't be certain. When things had relatively cooled down he made another faux pas. He complained about his immense professional workload. What was he expecting when he accepted the offer to join the Union Government? A five year long picnic with five star accommodation and enough leisure to write fictional and non-fictional pieces? One the one hand, you have Rahul Gandhi who works overtime and travels the length and breadth of the country with a charming smile on his face, and on the other there is his complete antithesis by the name Shashi Tharoor. I am really surprised he has not yet been given the sack. Tharoor may have written some good books on India, my personal favourite is The Great Indian Novel, but he is totally unfit to serve the Indians as a minister. I am sure many politicians become ministers with the object of grabbing power and enjoying the comforts attached to it, but no one makes such a distasteful and vulgar exhibition of obsession with the self. What offends me is his reckless elitism. Is this how you present yourself as a liberal of the Gandhian and Nehruvian mould? All I can say at the moment is that he has set a very bad precedent.
(The title of this piece is a pun on Shashi Tharoor's Bookless in Baghdad.)
Now, as we all know, it is difficult to find proper government lodging in the national capital at any given point of time. Retired or trashed public servants find it ever so difficult, despite repeated reminders from the Estate Department of the Urban Development Ministry, to vacate the comfortable white-coloured bungalows hidden behind the tree-lined avenues of Luyten's Delhi. So, given the state of affairs, where could Tharoor have gone? Accustomed to world-class comforts of living he moved into a suite in a five star hotel. His immediate boss, Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna, too had to go for such an arrangement. When they were cosily housed in their hotel suites, outside --- in the vast plain fields of India --- drought struck. Standing crops wilted away and agricultural production ran a downward course. The Indian Economy, already reeling from the impact of last year's global recession, went for a toss.
Presiding over the Indian Economy is the erstwhile pipe-smoking barrister from Calcutta and Congress Party's man of all seasons, Pranab Mukherjee. Resourceful as ever he launched the Government of India's austerity drive with the full-hearted support of the lady of 10 Janpath. The two started flying out as economy class passengers. They asked other ministers to follow suit. Initially there was some grumbling but ultimately their example proved to be too inspiring to be ignored. Even Sharad Pawar fell in fine. But nothing could ever miss the hawkish eyes of the Finance Minister. In his Bengali-accented English he roundly ticked off Krishna and Tharoor for living in such pomp and grandeur. They pleaded that they were not spending public money but that they were digging into the enormously fat bank balance of their own. Mukherjee wasn't impressed. Knowing pretty well that adamancy could cost them their jobs, they meekly checked out of their hotel rooms. The hotel staff and management must have shed buckets of tears on their departure. But we don't as yet know their part of the story.
Anyhow, Tharoor was asked to stay at Kerala Bhawan but he stubbornly refused. Being a self-respecting and self-financing man he couldn't degrade himself any further. After all, hadn't anybody heard the Mahatma Gandhi story that Sarojini Naidu had related? It cost the Congress Party and the Colonial British Government in India a fortune to keep Gandhi in poverty. But unlike Tharoor the men and the women in positions of power and authority hardly read books. They are only capable of shooting from the mouth. A fresh recruit into Indian politics Tharoor knows better. He doesn't shoot from his mouth unnecessarily; he has a stronger weapon, he writes, er.., he rather "tweets". The problem with writing in social-networking sites is that you can be as frank as possible. You can't be too formal or politically correct there; the medium simply doesn't permit it. You will be called a bore and your friends would pay little attention to what you are saying. So he ridiculed the austerity drive undertaken by his senior colleagues in the government in no uncertain terms and referred to economy class passengers, deridingly enough, as "cattle class". This is unpardonable and it appears to me that by using such an expression he has animalized the middle class Indians. Mr. Tharoor, middle class Indians are not bovine, you know!
If he thought such an utterance would go unnoticed, I am tempted to say he doesn't know the ABC of politics. He couldn't or shouldn't have imagined that such pronouncements would be accepted as poetic license. Even leaders from his own party bayed for his blood. The outrage he had created was too much. The Prime Minister himself had to step in to control the damage. Tharoor rushed to meet the Prime Minister, Congress President and Finance Minister to explain what he actually meant by that remark. Some news reports suggest that he apologized, but I can't be certain. When things had relatively cooled down he made another faux pas. He complained about his immense professional workload. What was he expecting when he accepted the offer to join the Union Government? A five year long picnic with five star accommodation and enough leisure to write fictional and non-fictional pieces? One the one hand, you have Rahul Gandhi who works overtime and travels the length and breadth of the country with a charming smile on his face, and on the other there is his complete antithesis by the name Shashi Tharoor. I am really surprised he has not yet been given the sack. Tharoor may have written some good books on India, my personal favourite is The Great Indian Novel, but he is totally unfit to serve the Indians as a minister. I am sure many politicians become ministers with the object of grabbing power and enjoying the comforts attached to it, but no one makes such a distasteful and vulgar exhibition of obsession with the self. What offends me is his reckless elitism. Is this how you present yourself as a liberal of the Gandhian and Nehruvian mould? All I can say at the moment is that he has set a very bad precedent.
(The title of this piece is a pun on Shashi Tharoor's Bookless in Baghdad.)
Excellent......but....I got lost in the politics, excuse my ignorance. I hope the next post is on a lighter note, namely: gossip. Best of luck."A journey of a thousand words begins with a single blog"- Me ;)
ReplyDeleteThis was an excellent piece of writing about Tharoor. May I add some more to the Intelligent Gossip. I sometimes wonder weather the American Government is paying Sashi Tharoor for "serving" the "much-under devoloped" India from his air-conditioned five star hotels! This man , who tried to 'localize' in the capital city of Kerala, by wearing a "Khadar" shirt and white dhoti and claiming that he can speak enough Malayalam for contesting in elections, has a school in Kerala which endorses American model of Education and it has children from Ministerial and Beaurocrat households....and at the same time he went and got in to a problem by directing some of the audiences in a function that he attended in Kerala, which also included some senior I.P.S/I.A.S Officers in to an American Model respect giving when the Indian National Anthem was playing! I am seriously waiting for the day when this guy visit U.S.A with Indian Prime Minister. I wana know weather he will go and salute the U.S President in front of our Prime Minister.
ReplyDeleteP.S- There is a mistake in your writing. He did not scorch in Malabar heat. Because Malabar is in the northern part of Kerala. In fact he was contesting from Trivandrum, which is the southern most end of Kerala which also was the capital of Travancore Kingdom before the unification of the state in 1953.