The Great Indian Cattle Class Tamasha
Shashi Tharoor’s tweets on ‘cattle class’ & ‘holy cows’ seems to have got the Congress’ goat.. quite unnecessarily so. After ‘Holier Than Thou’ Jayanthi Natarajan’s disapproval of Tharoor’s tweets, the Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot has now joined the fray and asked for Tharoor’s resignation ostensibly ‘for his “derogatory cattle class” remarks about people travelling in economy class’.
Now I’ve traveled ‘cattle class’ all my life and I find nothing derogatory about it. Azim Premji flies economy and he’s got no hang ups about it, in fact almost all the Indian IT majors I know insist on flying economy especially when flying within India. Even Ramalinga Raju (who’s in a different class altogether now) used to fly ‘cattle class’ on domestic trips. I am sure most Indian corporates have similar policies and have no hangups about it. Of course, if one gets a free upgrade to business class (thanks to logging frequent flier miles) then the chance is not thrown away…after all what else are these miles good for?
Much ado about nothing and it proves that our so-called ‘leaders’ have nothing much to do. Sample this tweet from Tharoor : “@dilnawazpasha holy cows are NOT individuals but sacrosanct issues or principles that no one dares challenge. Wish critics wld look it up”
And if Messrs. Natarajan, Gehlot and Co. need further clarification on ‘cattle class’, they need not look beyond the Oxford dictionary. In fact, the reference is so common that it’s part of popular usage and no one minds it, apart from the aforementioned parties.
While at it, I thought I’d try to compile & classify a list of popular ‘travel classes’ in India, feel free to add more classes that you think fit the bill…
Indian travel classes
