Senior Congress Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor is quite the darling of the middle classes. He is charming, well spoken, erudite, a skilled debator and has a felicity with the English language. But he stands at a crossroads in his political career today, unsure of which route to take in case he reaches a dead-end with no way to get back. His party’s ruling clique in his home state of Kerala, the trio of powerful AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal, leader of opposition in the legislative assembly V.D. Satheeshan and man for all seasons Ramesh Chennithala, is unwilling to cede space in state politics to him. The danger of being deemed irrelevant is real and imminent in this scenario. It is also unacceptable for Throor, who has grown used to being in the limelight after a meteoric rise in politics despite being an outsider. He quickly became a star with a ministership to boot during the UPA years under the guardianship of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi.
