Just in jest don't bet on casino mukt goa

Just in jest don't bet on casino mukt goa

Especially as the election season sees gambling fever rise all around.
Election season is like party time at the casino, all Bellagio like fireworks and Swarovski studded promises and the sounds of poker chips stacking up and down. Maybe this kinship is the reason why, although every political party pledges to shut down the casinos in Goa, their wheel of fortune keeps turning.
New kid on the block AAP is scolding BJP and Congress for failing to deliver casino-free Goa. In calling them U-turn politicians it's gambling that Goa never finds out that once upon a time Delhi was given to believe that Arvind Kejriwal would never contest elections, never take the support of Congress, never live in a Lutyens' bungalow ... The gamble is big but as Navjot Singh Sidhu who came close to being Awaaz-e-AAP said, one who doesn't throw the dice can never expect to score a six.
Even voting is like betting. You slide this little slip into the slot, then hope for the jackpot. Like escape velocity of Jupiter. Or 15 lakh rupees in your bank account. Victorious parties do keep some of their pledges post election, feeding the punter's delusion that she will eventually make up her losses when the “big one“ comes through. But after all is done and dusted, the voter will not rake in anything like BJP or Congress or AAP. It's casino rule number one: House always wins.
As Nitin Gadkari is said to have disclosed, “Char kaam hum unke karte hain, char kaam woh hamare karte hain (they do some jobs for us, we do some jobs for them)”. If this seems like laying bare the omertà, the former BJP president does seem to have a taste for it. Like on being quizzed on whether chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar or former chief minister Manohar Parrikar would helm the state if BJP won again Gadkari ingenuously revealed, “Hum log yeh bhi kar sakte hain, woh bhi kar sakte hain (we could do this, we could do that)”. Of course this only lengthens the odds of the voter betting on the winning horse.
Still, in the run-up to the election even the humblest voters are treated as if they are high rollers: think James Bond at Monte Carlo, sporting tuxedo and martinis. Remember that casinos really lay out the red carpet for these whales, from marble hand-picked in Italy to chefs stolen from Michelin starred restaurants and silverware that's actually gold. Voters can luxuriate in sops in this honeymoon period.
Even whatever Cleopatra wallowed in couldn't have been as wondrous as India's election sops. Akali Dal has promised to settle Punjabi farmers abroad by acquiring 1 lakh acres of land in countries like the US. Guess they will be hiring poor American workers there like they hire poor Bihari labourers here ¬ to Trump increasing visa restrictions. Ambitious AAP should now go where no Punjabi farmer has gone before, and row the hoe on Mars.
Back in Goa the casinos look set to stay. As a pragmatic taxi driver opined, tourists only come for three months in winter but gamblers come all year round.