Pawar, finally, leg before

One is actually greatful to the IPL for providing entertainment & insights like no sport has done before. Who could have visualised Tharoor's extra curricular interests or Modi's huge stakes? Or Praful Patel's daughter's selective info leaks or the BCCI President (Shashank Manohar) turning out to be a stake owner of the Chennai team when he ought to have been a neutral administrator ? The sharp twists & surprising turns would certainly do Ekta Kapoor proud !

The prize catch, in this ever unfolding, if somewhat sordid drama, has been Sharad Pawar. Murmurs on his active - below the radar involvement in lucrative sectors and industries have been abuzz for as long as he has been in active politics. His dealings and stakes in the sugar sector (agriculture, milling and retailing), the packaging industry (through a company called Dynamix), egg and poultry production (through Baramati Agro), grapes & wineries (Baramati grapes) have been part of folk lore. Always talked about but never ever proven. There are whispers linking him to Jet airways as part owner. His insistence on retaining the agriculture and civil aviation ministries with himself in every successive government need to be seen in this context.

The first cracks in his bastion appeared when his entire family stepped in to annouce in a well orchestrated move that they had nothing to do with the IPL. This was about a month ago and it almost seemed like a weak attempt to shore up the embankments in the face of an upcoming cyclonic storm that was certain to make landfall soon! It took nosey journos a month to unravel the modus operandi of his company's failed bid for the Pune IPL team. Now as the reigning BCCI Chairman, he is hard pressed to explain this impropriety. As he attempts to stonewall, divert attention and distance himself through rejoinders on technicalities of shareholding pattern and the MD's supposed actions, he is slithering on the thinnest of surfaces. He knows pretty well that urban India wouldnt buy his logic of the MD acting in defiance of the board. An MD who exposes the company to the risk of failure and a big one at that despite (claimed) advise from the board in any case deserves immediate dismissal! Wonder why the board of his company didnt do that ?

If the current revealations have not blown away the proverbial fig leaf and provided the first deep down look at perhaps the most corrupt man in India, then nothing ever will. Its another matter that this man is a hard nosed hawk for whom no embarrassment is so large and no ignominy as much as to get him to accept, apologise and step down. He stands unabashedly leg before, feeling safe that the Umpire's finger is unlikely to go up and those in rural India who form the bulk of his support base in all likelihood would remain unconcerned! Shame is a word that exists in the lexicon of ordinary mortals, afterall !