Sweating his equity

Shashi Tharoor once said on Twitter, "I have always wanted to play cricket very badly. And that's just what I did: I played cricket very badly." It seems his tweets and the game of cricket have come back to haunt the former minister of state for external affairs. Accused of ministerial impropriety in his role relating to the IPL Kochi franchise, Tharoor, one of Manmohan Singh's most flamboyant ministers, was asked to submit his resignation as he had become an embarrassment to the Government.

Ironically, though Tharoor had few supporters when he was a minister, he found many of his colleagues reaching out to him to shake hands after he had read out his resignation speech in Parliament on April 20. "My conscience is clear and I know that I have done nothing improper or unethical, let alone illegal. Nonetheless, I have no desire to be an embarrassment to the Government," he said in a hurt, accented tone.