From one tweet to mayhem..

On 12th April, 2010, among the millions and millions of "tweets" being sent all around the world, there was one particular tweet from a certain Lalit Modi that caught the eye. He, for his own reasons, decided to reveal the names of the stakeholders lof the Kochi IPL franchise on a public domain for the world to see. All it took was that one tweet from Modi to open up Pandora's box and gradually unearth what could turn out to be one of the biggest and ugliest scams this country has seen. The black hole now known popularly as "IPL-gate" soon started sucking in filmstars, politicians, businessmen, sportspersons, administrators....it spared none. Sharks in the media too were out for blood and a piece of the action, and, as I type this, one victim has already been claimed - Shashi Tharoor, former minister and one of the finest orators our country has seen.

Make no mistake about it, no one here is right, and no one is wrong. It's just a question of determining the lesser of two evils. IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi thought he had produced a master-stroke by tweeting the names of the Kochi franchise stakeholders to resolve a potential conflict of interest, but little would he have known that it would backfire on him so badly. He is now on the verge of being ousted from the IPL governing council, and thrown out of the very enterprise he was responsible for conceptualising and conceiving. Yes, one may say that the idea isn't exactly original - similarities may be drawn with football leagues around the world and the (now bankrupt) Indian Cricket League (ICL), but one cannot argue that no brand has been built up and established in as short a span of time as IPL. The amount of money involved in the IPL is astounding, and at times even scary. When one is talking about thousands of crores of rupees exchanging hands, disparities and discrepancies are inevitable as one can easily tend to get carried away. And with Lalit being at the centre of all these dealings, it wouldn't be surprising to see him taking advantage of a number of such situations. There's always a line, and it's now upto the government and Income-Tax officials to see if that line has been crossed.

Coming to Shashi Tharoor, I must admit I was deeply disheartened to hear the kind of excuses he was offering, when it was blatantly clear what he was trying to do. I used to admire the man, and was always in awe of him whenever I heard him give a speech. Claiming that he was merely a "mentor" to the Kochi consortium is nothing short of farcical, given that his "partner" Sunanda Pushkar was given such a substantial stake as free equity. Who is this Sunanda Pushkar anyway? Well, apparently she's involved in multiple businesses. Apart from running a spa in Dubai, she holds an executive's post with an infrastructure company owned by the Emirate government. She has previously worked at an IT firm in Toronto and a travel agency in Dubai. The big question is: Is it mere co-incidence that she also happens to be involved in a relationship with Shashi Tharoor? There seems to be no real reason why she of all people was gifted that sweat equity if Mr. Tharoor had nothing to do with it. The bottom line is that Tharoor has abused his power as a minister to get a personal favour done; it doesn't matter whether he directly profits from it or not. As such, he was really left with no choice but to resign from his post.

The number of public figures being dragged into this just seems to increase day by day, with the likes of Praful Patel and Sharad Pawar also being added to the list. The ways in which power is being abused is extremely disturbing - the latest revelation being that of a commercial Air India flight from Delhi to Mumbai making an unscheduled stop in Jaipur to pick up the Mumbai Indians team. I mean, seriously, who do these people think they are to play around with the common man? It just gets murkier and murkier with each passing day, and the IPL's functioning and brand value may have sustained irreparable damage over the past few weeks.

Lesson to be learnt from all this: watch what you tweet, 'cos it may just come back to bite you in the a** someday!!