Indefensible

One can only imagine what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,dealing with great power politics in Washington DC and Brasilia,will have felt as,in the middle of a foreign tour,one of the junior ministers in his foreign ministry suddenly caused,once again,a major controversy. One can only picture the frustration of the UPAs parliamentary managers as the Houses of Parliament had to be adjourned as the opposition happily sailed into the ruling Congress,now looking particularly inept and unable to control a loose cannon in its midst. The links,now plain,between Shashi Tharoor and the consortium that successfully bid for the Kochi franchise in the Indian Premier League have damaged,certainly,the leagues credibility,and further eroded Tharoors; but allowing him to stick around much longer puts a Shashi-sized hole in the UPAs and the cabinets standing as well.

The simple conclusion: politically,Tharoor is now too much of a liability to have around. There is no reason why a government that has an ambitious legislative agenda,that has to carefully manage its majority in Parliament as well as its support from the party,needs to put any of that at risk for one minister particularly one who is far from irreplaceable at the job he does. Fresh revelations emerged on Friday about the nature of the share that Tharoors friend Sunanda Pushkar has in the Kochi franchise: it is undilutable,meaning that regardless of how much money other investors put in,Pushkars share will remain the same. This is,by any standards,a windfall; and no amount of wriggling will alter the fact that a minister of the Government of India has directly lobbied for a consortium that so tremendously benefits a close associate. The government must know that defending such behaviour would not be without consequence to itself.

So why is he still around? Why does the finance minister,the senior-most member of the government in the absence of the PM,have to give up precious time to meet him several times a day? Why is the UPA chairperson forced to spend time and effort dealing with the mess that Tharoor has caused? The longer the party tries to ride this out,the more closely will the party and government be associated with the kind of impropriety Tharoor is accused of. It is time to bring to this unfortunate sequence of events its long-anticipated end.