The government has named the national rural employment guarantee programme after Gandhi. That would not have been a surprise if it had been named after Indira or Rajiv Gandhi. Nor would anyone have given it a second thought if it had been named after Jawaharlal Nehru, who belongs to the right genre even if he has the wrong name. What is stunning, however, is that the programme has been named after Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma Gandhi. Perhaps the nominal diversification can be explained by the fact that Congress governments have used the Gandhi-by-marriage name all too often; names, like currency, tend to get devalued if they are used indiscriminately. That, however, applies even more strongly to the MKG name, which has been in currency twice as long as the adopted Gandhi name, and has a greater achievement to its name, namely the freedom of India. It has been used so routinely that a stranger to any Indian town, if he does not know a thing about it, can get down at the railway station and ask the taxi driver to take him to Mahatma Gandhi Road; ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he will end up on some crowded, dirty road, full of jewellery and fashionwear shops. He is, however, unlikely to do so. This six-syllable name is too long for common use; he is more likely to ask for just MG Road.

In this surfeit of bogus homage, Shashi Tharoor’s admonition to the nation, that instead of taking a holiday, it should be working harder on the nation’s adopted father’s birthday, is a breath of fresh air. So was his celebration of his being consigned to cattle class. That is rather staidly ironical; perhaps more ironical is the idiot’s guide to diplomacy that is supposed to have originated from him.

But it cannot have been just another joke, for Tharoor has been engaged in serious diplomacy in the past two weeks. Among other things, he went heavily loaded with gifts to Liberia, and had a one-on-one with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia. He did not stop there. He went on to have a tête-à-tête with the Indian Female Formed Police Unit, the typically long-winded name that our policewomen exiled in Liberia must bear. Although it may be premature to attribute the achievement to our 53-year-young minister of state for external affairs, to use another typical long-winded Indian description, it has been reported that after his visit, young Liberian women have been queueing up to join the police. But just in case he has trouble at home for saying that he is “not proud about our over-politicisation, our emphasis on rights rather than responsibilities and our unwillingness to work in Kerala the way we work in the Gulf”, he has at least one other country where he will find a warm welcome.