Politics and social networking website: Controversy ingredients
Social networking websites and the politics of India have been the hubs for controversies since forever and when the both will come together, some sparkles are sure to shoot higher in the air and a recent issue has proved it well. Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of congress president Sonia Gandhi and the husband of the woman who is considered to be the shadow of her grandmother Indira Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi has been in yet another controversy due to his status update of the social networking website Facebook in which he termed India as a ‘banana’ republic and IAC activists as ‘mango people’ to let out his resentment of being associated as a corrupt individual.
The entire issue started off when anti-corruption activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal raised the matter of illegal deals that took place between Robert Vadra and the real estate giant DLF which includes an unsecured loan lender to Vadra of Rs. 65 crore along with certain other small deals that happened on a series of apartments in Gurgaon. The activist in a press conference smilingly said that ‘mango people’ have gathered some of the evidences in this regard and sent them to him. He not only put his allegations on Mr. Vadra but also claimed that the Haryana government lend its full support to both the parties to carry out the illegal deals with ease.
However, the issue was not much in the fire until Mr. Vadra updated his status whose translation in normal words raised the controversy. The ‘mango people’ refers to the ‘common people’ and the ‘banana republic’ has been defined by the Cambridge online dictionary as that country which is poorly managed by the people in a way that is not morally acceptable. This statement turned out to be a rage among the political parties as BJP leaders got a chance to point out the mentality of the Congress party after the statement of Shashi Tharoor, the then Minister of the State for External Affairs has termed the common class of public as the cattle class.
Trying to put an end to the raising controversy, Robert Vadra has deleted his account from the networking website while stating that the people who are in his friend list seem to have lost their sense of humour. That is why his simple statement became the headlines of the newspapers and every news channel, thus he decided to remove his account from the public notice.
