Shashi Tharoor row: Has Congress lost the plot?

It's the talk of the town: how Congress leadership moved quickly to discipline Shashi Tharoor, its MP from Thiruvananthapuram, allegedly for praising Prime Minister Narendar Modi's Swach Bharat Abhiyan (SBA). And in doing so it has once again misread the public mood. Like it or not, the SBA, launched amidst great fanfare, has met with public approval. And the Congress leadership seems to have missed the wood for the trees by disciplining one of its most articulate MPs over it.

Shashi Tharoor invited the leadership's wrath, we are told, for welcoming the PM's initiative. He was among nine prominent citizens who were invited to join and take forward the cleanliness drive. In inviting businessmen, film stars and cricketers and even politicians, PM Modi successfully created the impression that the need for sanitation in a country, where 53 per cent citizens lack access to public toilets, is an issue that goes beyond partisan politics. By acting against Tharoor, on that very issue, the Congress leadership has created exactly the opposite impression.

In the past, the Congress party overlooked many of Tharoor's shortcomings: be it his penchant for shooting off his mouth or his alleged role in trying to broker an IPL deal for a Kerala-based franchise. For a leadership that chose to look the other away when most ministers in UPA government were busy broadcasting their views, often contradicting each other in public, its decision to crack the whip on Tharoor on an issue that resonates with the public seems strange .

What went wrong? As one amongst nine eminent citizens chosen by the PM to participate in cleanliness drive, Tharoor said he was honoured. But he also added, tongue-in-cheek, that the need of the hour was to cleanse hearts and minds of bigotry, or words to that effect. He is certainly not the first senior Congress leader to appreciate the PM's effort.

In an excellent example of bipartisanship, following the devastating floods in J&K, both Ghulam Nabi Azad and Digvijay Singh (not known for having any love for the PM in the past) praised the manner in which the Modi government had responded. Tarun Gogoi, former Assam CM, is the latest to join the praise-Modi bandwagon. The decision, therefore, to remove Tharoor from the panel of Congress spokespersons is intriguing, to say the least.

The timing of the disciplinary action, for displaying a bit of bi-partisanship, has lent itself to all kinds of interpretation. There are many who believe it's a pre-emptive action, an effort to distance the party from the former minister, in case the probe into his wife Sunanda Pushkar's mysterious death goes against him. But there are others who believe that the political high-handedness hides a secret malady: the Congress leadership has not only been selective in enforcing discipline but also appears to have forgotten how to pick battles that it can win.