Everyone is on a moral high ground these days. Everyone except one Mr.Shashi Tharoor. No, this is not an excercise in justifying Tharoor. This is just a wonder filled gaze at the media and political circus going on for the past one week. And one image just flashes across my mind all the time. A purely imaginary image of a slightly corrupted Alibaba standing at the centre of a circular enclosure and 40(or more) thieves pointing their fingers at the man. They are shouting, they are accusing him of something which they themselves are not clear about. But they dont forget to point their fingers at him every other second. In between they take breaks to congratulate each other, laugh among themselves and celebrate the victory. Sometime later the camera zooms out. It was all happening on TV. Now the anchors continue the blabber and finger pointing. The direction of pointing is unmistakable. They seem to have missed the 40(or more) thieves standing around the enclosure. They point only at Ali Baba. The same cycle of accusations goes on. Zoom out. There sits one of those gentlemen who still believes that newsreaders cant lie. He also points his finger at the man and rejoices at the fact that Indian politics is cleansed.

Now the image changes. Alibaba and the enclosure fades out into the background. The 40(or more) thieves turn towards the camera. They look down from the high pedestal that they have perched upon. The finger pointing excercise begins. This time they are pointing at the naive gentleman, at you, at me. They slam their heads on the ground and laugh at the fools below them. Its the story of the moral high ground now overcrowded with people possessing anything but morality. Agreed, it was not a clean deal, what Tharoor had with regard to the kochi team. But was it so big a mistake so as to warrant the given punishment? What about the scam kings still in the cabinet? A.Raja, minister of communications and IT is the king of them all with a cool Rs.40,000 crore pocketed as part of the 2G spectrum auction sometime back. There was a CBI case against him and there were clear cut proofs. Higher officials of the BSNL came out in the open against him. All of them were transferred and Raja was left untouched. All because he's part of DMK, an ally the UPA can't live without. And with the 3G spectrum auction happening recently, we will have to get new 20 digit calculators to fully display the amounts that this guy and his cronies must've siphoned off.

Then there's Sharad Pawar of the NCP, another coalition partner of the UPA. With the food inflation almost strangling the lower class and part of the middle class, there was a strong case for his removal from the position of agriculture minister. But not even a whimper was heard. It was common knowledge that his ministry's policies were partly to blame for this disaster. And even if you leave that alone, what about all the dealings in the dark by the BCCI headed by this mighty man? No answers expected. There are guys like M.K.Alagiri(Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers), who is in that seat only because his dad found the task of managing him and his brother a hard one. So, the solution was to stop the barking of the elder by giving him a cabinet rank in the central govt. He barely ever attends the parliament, leave alone opening his mouth. He has more enterprising things to do like goondagiri in his hometown. More and more of this ilk are still sitting and laughing at you, me and Alibaba. Not to forget hypocrites like shobha de who dismisses the common man's support for tharoor with a wave of her finger. She finds fault with Tharoor's comments on business women being targeted in India and brands it sexist. So, madam de forgets that she lives and thrives on such sexist remarks she makes on tv and newspapers day in and day out. The hypocrisy of a self proclaimed feminist was on full view yesterday.

And so we are back to square one. The external affairs ministry can now function freely without the headache of a twitter account, the slogan of which was openness. Openness is a disease they say. Secrecy helps in the proper working of the democratic machinery. Afterall, its not anyone's business to know what the khadar and khadarless brigade does in their offices. Vote, close your mouth and watch tv for the next 5 years. Stay away from twitter and to hell with openness. Maybe, if Tharoor was part of one of those allies he might be still tweeting from his MEA office. Anyway, even without him, the moral high ground is certainly over crowded.

photo courtesy-inquisitr.com

EDIT
Shashi Tharoor's speech today in Parliament. A must watch- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBCY4S31MeQ&feature=player_embedded

your crusader Praveen

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