While it’s true that people get governments they deserve, there’s no doubt that there’s something inherently reprehensible about even the mightiest within the genus politicus indicus, a species distinguished for spiteful petty politics, the public interest be damned.
A case in point is Union home minister P. Chidambaram, a darling of the media and commonly acknowledged as a voice of sanity within the fractious Congress-led UPA government. Prior to being appointed home minister last November following the ouster of dandy immaculate dresser Shivraj Patil in the aftermath of the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai, Chidambaram served as Union finance minister for four long years.
Given this background of a long innings in top level national politics, Chidambaram should have resisted the temptation to stoop to petty politics by putting spokes in the wheels of the hugely popular, money-spinning IPL2 Twenty-Twenty cricket tournament, which was scheduled to be played in India between April 18 and May 24, but is now being staged in South Africa. Chidambaram’s motivation? To cut the too-big-for-his-boots IPL chief commissioner Lalit Modi, known to be close to the opposition BJP and former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje in particular, to size. Stating that the dates of IPL2 coincided with the general election, he expressed the Central government’s inability to provide security for the tournament. Coincidently the chief ministers of all Congress ruled states also admitted this inability.
In the event, Modi proved to be more clued up than Chidambaram about the new age of mass media and global television, and quickly moved the tournament to South Africa where it’s attracting enthusiastic crowds and the eye-balls of an estimated 350 million cricket-lovers in India and around the world, following IPL2 on television.
Instead of hurting Modi and the BJP as he clearly intended, the sanctimonious minister injured this country’s tourism industry, particularly the languishing hotel and related industries which were expecting a substantial inflow of tourists and customers for IPL2. And far from winning brownie points from the Congress high command for stumping Modi, Chidambaram’s got egg on his face.