In defence of 'resort raj'

 People don’t understand that the much maligned, easily misunderstood, rashly condemned and innocently distorted resort raj has actually re-sorted the politics towards delivering good governance to the people.

OK, we elected A on X ticket but he defects to Y, returns to X, enroute to Z. Breaking news it sure is, but why should it break hearts of the people? On the contrary A deserves to be praised, not punished. He did it because he has been spending sleepless nights worrying about our problems, our grievances, and bravely decided that if it came to the crunch, he would rather sacrifice his credibility rather than his promise to his voters.
As responsible voters we should give representatives like A, enough leverage, to push the envelope further. If the going rate is Rs 50 crore, we should ask ourselves honestly, should we grudge our MLA this? Here is someone who’s ready and willing to make his name mud as sacrifice to make our lives better, and how do we respond? If you have tears to shed, shed them for the poor souls who are holding intensive deliberations about the future of Karnataka non-stop in resorts.

A ministerial post

Actually, if like our honourable ‘resort MLA,’ we are genuinely serious about our constituency, we should be doing more. If A feels only a ministerial post stands between his promise and deliverance of that promise, we as his voters should totally back all his moves — from one resort to another, from one hotel to another.

As educated voters, we should be ashamed that only 20-25 per cent of our MLAs are willing to shame themselves for the sake of ushering in a corruption-free government. As voters we should hang our heads in shame that only a few of our MLAs are willing to do things an ordinary person would dare not do even in his wildest dreams, perhaps to even to save his life.

What has all this got to do with Norman Vincent Peale’s theory of Positive Thinking? Our philandering resort MLAs are the epitome of positive thinking. Their all-consuming passion to deliver a government that, let us be honest, we don’t really deserve has motivated them to be impossibly positive, whatever people, media, their near and dear, family, friends, etc, think of them. Even Peale pales in comparison; his readers and followers would have killed him for such positive thinking.

Great men

Sadly, great men are always misunderstood. The man who invented the wheel was crushed under that very wheel. Will our honourable defectors also meet the same fate in the next hustings? Will the voters turn a blind-eye to their burning desire to make our lives better, and pack them off permanently to resorts? Mercifully, every cloud has a silver lining to it. The voters of Karnataka are shrewd, very shrewd indeed, to see through any deception — by a trigger hungry and slanderous media — and divine the true picture.
Eventually, in the glorious traditions of our wonderfully opaque democracy, truth will prevail. Satyameva Jayate. When the bells toll for the Renukacharyas and the Asnotikars, we will be ready with our vote to redeem their heart-rending sacrifices!

Karnataka is poised for change. Today, 25 per cent of our MLAs are mercenaries battling for better governance. Soon, the entire Assembly of MLAs will be inspired to push the envelope and usher in resort raj in all its glory. Vidhana Soudha can be rented out to create a corpus for defraying the resort expenses of our honourable leaders.