Scrap Lokayukta, hold BBMP polls: Mysuru Maga’s path to Bengaluru legend

Bengaluru: There are none so blind as those that cannot see. … Or should that Biblical reference be rejigged to this — Do they believe that we are all so blind that we cannot see? The stink raised by the charges against the Lokayukta Bhaskar Rao and his son Ashwin Rao are so completely out of whack, so unimaginable, straight out of a work of fiction, that it seems almost unreal. Is it?

Isn’t this what the sons of the powerful have always done? Set up shop when their father’s star is in the ascendant, use their father’s — or mother’s — position and the power gained from having access to insider information to extract every bit of mileage and the dope they now have on you, to line their own pockets, and become wealthy beyond belief…
Is this done with or without the parent’s knowledge? Do these Papa Docs really have no inkling of what’s going on right under their nose?

Whom are we to believe? The father? The son? The decidedly unholy Ghost?

For years now, the whispers in the corridors of power, of hangers-on, secretaries to the powerful, men and women on the inside playing puppeteer, pulling the levers have been legion. There have been Sanjay Gandhis and Dhirendra Brahmacharis in every single dispensation that has gone before Indira Gandhi; as well as after. Without exception; At the centre; In the states.

That’s who we are. That’s what we are. Corrupt to the core, with nary a compunction on using x, y and z to grab a patch of land, get our son entry to a top college – even the Hizbul commander Salahuddin does it, why not you and I, eh?

Just look at the way the BJP/NDA ministers are following on from where their predecessors in the Congress/UPA government left off…forcing pilots to let their planes idle on the tarmac, guzzling up a gadzillion gallons of gas, because the minister is still at a function, hundreds of miles away. Time management, anybody?

Oh, and if anyone complains, offload them. The mother, the kid. Do they matter? Whose going to listen to a kid anyway?

What have we become? A nation of the corrupt, by the corrupt, for the corrupt. How can anyone not see the snake-pit that teems with all manner of vipers just below the surface? Yeesh! In fact, if there’s one thing that the Lokayukta scandal has done, it’s blown the lid off it all — the unconscionable rape of our country and its institutions by a closed club of the elected and the unelected. It’s Gotham City redux.   

And if Chief Minister Siddaramaiah believes it’s all just going to blow over, while he buries his head in the sand, ostrich-like, here’s the thing — it won’t. As Chief Minister, he must know, just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi does, that keeping silent as the world crumbles around you buys time. Not much else.

True, neither the estimable Vasundhara Raje nor the oh-so-cautious Sushma Swaraj can be given the heave-ho. Say nothing and you’re slammed for inaction. Give Ms Raje the boot and not only does he lose Rajasthan, it’s an admission of guilt. Either way, he’s *******.

But if Lalitgate has singed the BJP’s poster-boy (what were those yoga postures???), Ayuktagate hasn’t done the Congress’ laadla beta any favours.

If Mr. Siddaramaiah wants to imprint his name, and his legacy on the face of our fair city, this is the time to do it. Granted, nobody has binding proof that it was Ashwin Rao who was posing as Krishna Rao, or whether the son of the Lok Ayukta was indeed the man who made the calls to the IAS officers, asking for crores in return for the Lok Ayukta’s silence. Or that many IAS officers paid up!! There are no records, no tapes of the actual conversations, no bank records of cash changing hands.

What we do have is the redoubtable policewoman Sonia Narang, and a babu who reportedly saw Ashwin Rao on television who said ‘hey, that’s the guy who called me over to the Lokayukta’s home office and asked me to fork out a crore, or else…’

Hearsay, which has now become a contentious FIR versus an even more fraught SIT, that could end up in an impeachment! Or not! If the Chief Minister has the moxy, he should use the opportunity presented by the shadow that now lies across this government body to institute a complete clean-up. Of the city, of the institutions that hold us back, and the ubiquitous middlemen, everyone and everything that has made government a byword for corruption and backroom dealing.

Mr. Siddaramaiah should start with the BBMP. One has absolutely no tell on why the assembly polls and the Parliamentary polls are being held to one set of parameters, and the polls to the body that has been tasked to run our city is being held to an even older matrix.

Bengaluru is no longer the city that we grew up in. It’s exploding at the seams, growing in leaps and bounds from a sleepy backwater where one thought nothing of hitching a ride to college from Webb’s Garage and back on virtually empty streets, to today’s frustrating gridlock at rush hour every evening, every day, that has my daughter sitting in traffic for one and a half to two hours as she tries to get back home along the IT corridor. It’s a city of 10 million people. More are coming in every day. It’s pointless to work with the data that dates back to 2001 or even 2011. That no longer even applies to 2015 and beyond.  

Mr. Siddaramaiah has won two months of time. It’s a breather, it’s not much. If he could wangle a few more months, even a year, one is confident he can erase the pathetic mess that the corporators owing allegiance to the BJP left behind, and go about setting this city to rights. (Why Mr. Complacent sat on his haunches for the two years he has been in government is of course, no longer a mystery – there was no election to be won.)      

But for the here and now, one really has no beef on whether the BBMP is cut into three boroughs or expanded to five, or remains as one, and whether he has five men running it, or fifteen. What we need is a functioning entity, and good, clean men and women who can transform Bengaluru into one of the stellar cities of the world. Under the aegis of the Chief Minister. Not yet another mayor or the lone commissioner who tend towards ad hoc decision making that we are all paying the price for.

Collective governance is a must, so that no one man has the right to ride roughshod over the other, or let his minions and his inner circle misuse the institution. (Indeed, with the Lokayukta, the CM should either empower the trio of Lokayuktas – there are two Upa Lokayuktas — or, just do away with the body completely.)

Mr. Siddaramaiah, going  from Mysuru Maga to the Urban Legend?…Don’t scoff, its possible. He could just take city founder Kempe Gowda’s dream to its logical conclusion. And win us all over!