Tharoor finds himself haunted by the cattle-class remark.
Whether in Guwahati or Galle, and no matter how many years might pass, it looks like former United Nations bureaucrat-turned-Indian-politician Shashi Tharoor will be best remembered for the “cattle class” remark made on twitter.
At the Galle Literary Festival, where Tharoor was one of the largest crowd-pullers this year, the question came the moment the floor was opened to the audience: “Do you regret your cattle class tweet? Why did you make it?”
The tweet in question, Tharoor explained in some detail yet again, was in response to a question from a “journalist of anti-Congress persuasion” soon after the Government of India introduced an austerity drive. She had asked him: “Tell us, Minister, next time you travel to Kerala, will it be cattle class?” Tharoor, then Minister of State for External Affairs, replied: “Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows.”
Tharoor explained that he had been working abroad for over 30 years and was used to the phrase. It was commonly used to ridicule airlines for the manner in which they treated economy/coach class passengers and not a description of travellers of that class. He was at pains to explain that the inference that he had described economy class passengers as cattle was wrong. “To this day, there are at least a few references each day to the remark I made,” he told the audience, adding how a voter from his constituency, Thiruvananthapuram had voiced her objections! A desperate Tharoor said that if he lost the next elections, a lot of ‘credit’ would go to this misunderstood remark.
R.K. Radhakrishnan
