Mr. Tharoor has finally quit.
Did he do anything wrong? Perhaps yes.
Was this the way to handle him? No.
Perhaps his flamboyance did him in. Perhaps he was too amateurish in handling it all, i.e. the political system. Perhaps he was too threatening to "seasoned" politicians.
Tharoor tried to make his entry to club of old bum-chums, i.e. the the Congress party and the Cabinet. But any such club has the natural instinct to deny entry, drub aside any newcomer. Perhaps the membership criteria for this club is genes and the lineage or ability to kiss a lot of ass. Tharoor did not fit in at all and therefore had to go.
Perhaps, he simply put in a word to push the Kochi team. Perhaps, he never did it with the intent of making money on the sly in this scandal. Perhaps, he just negotiated on behalf of his girlfriend to get the best deal for her. Perhaps he was set up? Perhaps....
Shashi Tharoor did not deserve this. There are more corrupt people in the system who deserve harsher punishments than Shashi Tharoor but they were perhaps the ones who judged him.
That's highly ironic about the Indian system.
Years ago I heard a joke about the so called Indian crab mentality which goes somewhat like this:
In a huge dockyard, there were containers of each country in the world lying there full of live crabs. The containers of each country were covered from the top except that of one country - India. The container of India containing crabs was uncovered from the top.
This perplexed a visitor who asked the dockyard owner why only the Indian container was left open from the top and that of every other country was closed from the top. The dockyard owner replied "Its simple. If we left the containers of other countries open, all the crabs would climb to the top and walk out. However with the Indian crabs it is never so as every time an Indian crab tries to climb up the container, another crab pulls it down and therefore none of the Indian crabs is able to leave the container!!!!!!!!!!!"
Mr. Shashi Tharoor was unseasoned politician and junior minister. He seemed to have put his elders in discomfort more than once. He was maverick who could speak about something with brutal honesty. Perhaps this was his undoing as politics requires political language, finesse and diplomacy.
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After making some guffaws in the beginning, was he a slow learner not to understand the undercurrent of the party that he represented and GOI?