Shashi Tharoor has fallen, Lalit Modi could follow suit, and the Indian Premier League (IPL) – the world's most spectacular sporting extravaganza in recent years – will no longer be the same. There is dismay all round. Yet there's hope that some good will come out of it all, the kind of hope you won't let go of even when six sixers is the only way out in the last over. The high drama that captivated all India this past week was mind-blowing in the manner it exploded on to center-stage. Like uncontrolled nuclear fission from a rare combination of explosive elements, timing and trigger, the crisis erupted with simply a reckless push of the Twitter button. Across the country, it stopped man, woman, child, young, old, rich, poor, drop-out or schooled, in their tracks. Here was Indian reality TV at its finest hour, combining cricket, Bollywood, big money, politics, sleaze, love, betrayal, sacrifice and what not into one all-consuming spectator sport. In one fell swoop, everything that is right and wrong with India today got morphed into one single countdown, one single crisis, one single question across the country: where to from here? If you ask the hardened old skeptic who has lost hope of life without corruption or its ineffective antibodies coursing in their veins, they'd say this is just another chapter to be eventually buried in the great Indian story. But if you ask the educated youngsters out there who believe India is on track to emerge as a 21st century superpower, they'd say go in for the kill, crush the corrupt, eradicate the national evil. Fact is that the Congress Party of Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has gained the upper hand through the IPL crisis. By forcing Tharoor to resign from his post of junior foreign minister, Congress has seized the moral high ground. The fight against corruption has landed plumb on its lap, become its cause. There's no backing down for Congress, not now with the next round of general elections years away, and surely not at this half-time pause in the IPL saga with all of India so thoroughly engrossed and deliberating over how the Bollywoodian plot might ever unravel to make for that happy ending they generally expect of a smash hit in the box-office. Simply put, it has come down to the “paisa vasool” thing – what will it take to give a whole lot of Indians their “money's worth”? Every Indian who has a stake in the IPL, either by spending to watch a match (on TV or in the stadium), or by investing time to talk about the games' thrills, now has their eye on the ball of political conduct that has strayed into the cricket field. The scandal has drawn everybody's attention to the exponential growth of crass commercialization spawned by an ingenious mix of corporate greed and corrupt politics. This new-found connect of such a colossal number of people in the cricket-crazy country to the corrupt ways of Indian politics is bound to result in something, hopefully in the vote bank and not in the offshore bank of more dirty money. Given that 50 percent of the population is below the age of 25, a change in national consciousness for the better is the more likely possibility, though it's still just a six-sixer hope. Both Tharoor and Modi, now surely the most famous twits on Twitter, are guilty of excesses done wittingly or unwittingly. Tharoor, in particular, must be strung up and horsewhipped not so much over the serious charges of corruption against him but for his ridiculous projection of political naiveté. Tharoor has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to institute a thorough investigation of the charges against him. “I've led a life of personal integrity... and it is important to me that my name is cleared,” Tharoor had said in his Lok Sabha curtain call on Tuesday. But that's not the point. Whatever be the outcome of the investigation, it will still be hard to believe that a person who has spent “a lifetime in international public life”, who was once considered for the post of United Nations secretary general, who has authored tomes on India, can be so ignorant as to tout the worth of his perceived personal integrity in the universally recognized snake-pit of Indian public life. No, Tharoor's righteous indignation over unintentionally landing up in that gray area between legal and ethical conduct won't wash. His claim of Keralite blood throbbing in his veins is no excuse for his indiscretion or his brazen inclusion of his love life in his mentoring of a cause for all Keralites. Modi is faced with charges of financial irregularities running into millions of dollars. He denies all the charges and makes no bones about his role in the phenomenal success of the IPL. But he will be defanged as well. Until last week, both Tharoor and Modi were the best examples of the emerging Indian who is well educated, suave, articulate, and driven by an irrepressible need to make a difference. They embodied the hopes of new India, raised expectations to soaring heights, and then dashed it all. For the country, the loss of the two is unfortunate, shocking. Suddenly, we are all back to Square 1, back to the dominance of the old school of Indian politics where even such an audacious thought of nationalizing the IPL can be a bright idea. – SG Feedback: [email protected] __
