Tweeter and IPL

Shashi Tharoor has been courting controversy ever since he gave up pin striped suits with matching silk ties and slipped into political attire of bandhgala. He has been tweeting away merrily and referred to economy class in aviation industry as "cattle class". If he had such contempt for economy class, he should not have ventured into politics and should have stayed put in some multilateral agency or an international organisation where he could have used his contacts across the globe to the hilt. Though he is a modern man in terms of mastery over "technology", he tended to be immature. Decision making in Cabinet means collective responsibility for the decisions taken and there is no point in tweeting after agreeing to austerity measures. He and his boss SM Krishna did create a furore by staying in five star hotels for considerable length of time after being sworn into the cabinet and the excuse they gave was that their official quarters were not ready. There was a political furore over this extravagant living style and they hastily shifted to some state bhawans in Lutyen's Delhi. Why they did not chose to stay at the respective state bhawans ever since they were sworn in is not clear.

The people running BCCI and IPL are no paragons of virtue.Only recently tax authorities have withdrawn the privilege of being charitable organisation bestowed on BCCI whose avowed function was to promote cricket in India. The tax authorities indicated that only 7 % of the annual income had been spent for this noble cause while withdrawing the charitable institution status.

IPL has been a Las Vegas sort of institution from its inception. The owners of five teams are industrialists- Mukesh Ambani owns Mumbai Indians, India Cements Srinivasan owns Chennai Super Kings, Vijay Mallya owns Royal Challengers Bangalore, GMR owns Delhi Dare Devils and Deccan Chronicle owns Deccan Challengers Hyderabad. The public faces of the other three teams are film stars who are also co owners-Preity Zinta of Punjab Kings, Shilpa Shetty of Rajasthan Royals and Shah Rukh Khan od Kolkata Knight Riders. However popular these actors might be, they are nowhere near the five corporate owners mentioned above in terms of financial wherewithal and financial acumen of running businesses. I feel the ownership of these three teams which sport film stars as the visible promoters is murky and lot of skeletons are likely to tumble out of cupboards when the IT sleuths dig in their heels.

IPL has been a big private party at the expense of the cricket crazy Indian public.Mandira Bedi in her columns said that the best IPL through out the nights parties happen at Bangalore and Kolkata. No doubt IPL is a Las Vegas style venture.

Shashi Tharoor is a master tweeter. He started tweeting on the IPL Kochi franchisee saga. Lalit Modi out tweeted Shashi Tharoor making him leave the Union Cabinet Ministry. Lalit Modi also seems to be at the end of the road as far as his role in IPL is concerned.

It is time to rename tweeter as " Indian boomerang " !

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