The Hassan Hustle

IT IS SWAROOP PRAKASH’S BIRTHDAY. FRIENDS and followers vie for a selfie with him under a white shamiana pitched opposite his newly built house in Hassan. Some come bearing heavy garlands and cakes the size of carrom boards. An entire table is taken up by red-and-white cakes that spell out his name in Kannada. The 40-year-old has been smiling away since 8AM, but there is an unmistakable ner­vousness about him. An engineer, Zila Parishad member and son of the late four-term MLA from Hassan HS Prakash, Swaroop is the top contender from Janata Dal (Secular) for the Assembly seat in the coming election. HD Kumaraswamy has doggedly backed his candidature despite his brother HD Revanna’s threat to destabilise the party unless his wife Bhavani Revanna is fielded from Hassan. HD Revanna, the MLA from Holenarasipur, wields considerable influence in his father HD Deve Gowda’s home district. And for rea­sons ranging from sub-caste politics to his own family’s ambitions in the district, he has refused to acknowledge Swaroop, whose family members say he did not even turn up for Prakash’s funeral in 2018. For someone who is yet to cut his political chops, being billed as the leading horse is hard enough without his own party leaders trying to scuttle his chances. “If Revanna and his followers support me, I will win,” Swaroop admits. His friend and former classmate Satisha Gowda, who is an engineer with IBM in Bengaluru, says JD(S) cannot win in Hassan without him. “Swaroop is young, he is clean and he comes from a family that is well respected. A lot of us are in JD(S) only for him. He doesn’t have the money to contest but we have assured the party it will be taken care of.”

The reason Kumaraswamy wants to field “an or­dinary party worker” from Hassan, a small town in the politically significant Old Mysore region that sends 64 MLAs to the 224-member As­sembly, is the public pushback against the cross-generational family saga of JD(S). With six members of the party’s first family in positions of power, another contesting from a bellwether seat could eat away at JD(S)’ already declining vote share in the state. It is also rumoured that Kumaraswamy is not too pleased with the imbalance of power within the family. Revanna’s elder son Suraj is an MLC from Hassan, and his younger son Prajwal is the MP representing the Hassan Lok Sabha constituency, while Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil lost to Sumalatha Ambareesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Mandya. That said, Swaroop may well be asked to pull out of the race to make way for Bhavani at the eleventh hour. “There are several factors stacked against us this time. The BJP’s decision to increase the quota for Vokkaligas by 2 per cent is one,” Swaroop says. “If there is one thing I learnt from my father, it is how not to take people for granted.”

People close to Swaroop claim that Congress has offered to field him and that he is loathe to stray from his father’s political ideas. With seven of eight Assembly constituencies represented by JD(S), the Vokkaliga-dominated Hassan district is prime poach­ing ground this election season. The JD(S) MLAs from Arkalgud and Arsikere have quit the party, with AT Ramaswamy joining BJP and KM Shivalinge Gowda joining Congress, and Bharatiya Janata Party’s A Manju, a habitual turncoat, switching over to JD(S) in the hope of snagging a ticket. Despite winning four seats here in the 1999 Assembly election on the backs of the late BB Shivappa—one of the founding members of the state BJP unit—and former Congress MLA from Hassan KH Hanumegowda, BJP has failed to take root in the district. “When you build a house without pillars and a foundation, it won’t last. This time round, we are laying a strong foundation for BJP to bloom in Hassan. For the first time, our party has won local body elections here,” says 41-year-old Preetham J Gowda, who made history in his maiden electoral run in 2018 by beating two seasoned politicians from parties with a stronger base than BJP in Hassan. With 41.3 per cent votes—against JD(S) candidate HS Prakash’s 32.8 per cent and Congress candidate HK Mahesh’s 24.8 per cent—Preetham won because of his focus on local issues like drainage and drinking water. This time round, he is playing to his strengths, showcasing the development work accomplished in the past five years, and promising to transform Hassan into a real city. There is no men­tion of Tipu Sultan or other communal themes in his pitch, or of the 2 per cent extra reservation for the Vokkaliga community announced by the Basavaraj Bommai government. Instead, there is an abundance of charm, machismo and ambition.

HD Kumaraswamy has doggedly backed Swaroop’s candidature despite his brother HD Revanna’s threat to destabilise the party unless his wife Bhavani Revanna is fielded from Hassan. For reasons ranging from sub-caste politics to his own family’s ambitions in the district, he has refused to acknowledge Swaroop

Share this on

It is not every day you see a young, freshly minted politician from a small town in southern Karnataka claim before an audi­ence of school teachers that he will one day become chief min­ister. “With your blessings, I became an MLA, I served, and I am here to ask you to give me a chance to better my own record of developmental works in the constituency,” says BJP’s lone MLA from Hassan district, requesting that the audience spread word of his good deeds among their friends and family. “People who have lorded over this town for decades have lacked the imagination to improve our standard of living. This is because if it became a city, it would no longer serve their feudal schematic. So they did not build a medical college or an engineering college here. The airport remained a pipedream until our government recently pledged to make it operational within 18 months. In just five years, I have been able to get drinking water from the Hemavathi river for the villages around Hassan city. I took advantage of a National Green Tribunal order to commission a sewage treatment plant. We have just laid the foundation stone for a superspecialty hospital…” The countryside of Old Mysore does not share its secrets willingly, but development is the path BJP has to go to hit its stride in the region.

ACCORDING TO MEDIA REPORTS, Preetham Gowda’s open challenge to Revanna of winning by a 50,000-vote margin—the constituency has 2.23 lakh voters, of whom 35 per cent-40 per cent are Vokkaligas—has made it a matter of prestige for the JD(S) leader. Seemingly bris­tling at his impudence, Bhavani, who is said to have nurtured dreams of becoming an MLA for decades, had declared herself the party candidate from Hassan before being forced to take a step back. The party is yet to name a candidate. When I quiz Preetham, who is hurrying through a simple vegetarian lunch at his house, about his often offensively bold statements, he an­swers with candour. “If you are not brash, you cannot survive as a politician in Hassan,” he says. “I am not interested in being a one-time wonder. I am in this for the long haul.” He is also unapologetic about being aware of optics and making sure he gets recognition for his work. “If I have to powder my face to look good, won’t I do it, especially if it may get me a few extra votes? That does not mean there is something wrong with my face.”

“Preetham is the current favourite,” says Neeraj Gowda, a 38-year-old auto parts business owner. He scans the crowd of 300- plus at a wedding hall in the heart of the town, and says, “If I had to guess, I’d say at least 200 here will vote for Preetham, and this is despite the fact that he is with BJP. Caste politics aside, the party needs to tap people’s aspirations if it wants to improve its presence in Hassan.” Hassan had long hungered for a dynamic young MLA, Neeraj says. “Unless Revanna and Kumaraswamy come together to campaign for Swaroop, JD(S)’ chances are not looking good.”

Congress, too, is divided over who to field in Hassan, with Kar­nataka Pradesh Congress Committee President DK Shivakumar backing Banavase Rangaswamy and former Chief Minister Sid­daramaiah batting for BN Manje Gowda. While I wait at a restau­rant to meet Manje Gowda, the waiters say they are impressed with Preetham Gowda’s work. “There is no doubt that he is a man who gets work done,” says a server, declining to be named. “Everyone suspects he has made a lot of money off all the contracts, but they don’t mind as long as they have new roads, reliable water supply and work opportunities.” Preetham Gowda has promised to create a minimum of 5,000 jobs in Hassan for engineers and IT diploma holders.

Preetham J Gowda is playing to his strengths, showcasing the development work accomplished in the past five years, and promising to transform Hassan into a real city. There is an abundance of charm, machismo and ambition

Share this on

Inflation and unemployment are emotional is­sues for the people of Hassan, says Manje Gowda, ex-president of the State Government Employees’ As­sociation. “Congress is the underdog in this election. The spotlight is on JD(S) and the young BJP fellow, but we are working hard behind the scenes,” he says. “You must remember that Kumaraswamy and Shiva­kumar are the only mass Vokkaliga leaders and their influence goes a long way in this belt. BJP may win a stray seat now and then, but its Vokkaliga appease­ment policies won’t help the party build a base here.”

Caste is only half the battle, and perhaps not even that. It was collective Kannada pride that DK Shivakumar invoked on a recent visit to a Nandini milk parlour in Hassan in a show of support for the state milk cooperative in the face of competition from Amul, which recently announced its entry in the state. It is not the potential competition that has made this issue a political flashpoint, but the Narendra Modi government’s alleged attempt to infringe on a state subject. Bommai has since clari­fied that there is no proposal to merge Amul and Nandini, but with 50 lakh families connected to the Karnataka Milk Federation, Congress hopes to hard sell the state-vs-Centre narrative to its advantage. “This is a non-issue,” claims G Manju­nath, a 54-year-old farmer and coconut seller from Hassan who availed an interest-free loan of `2.5 lakh under a BJP government scheme last year. “No one can match Nandini’s prices or BJP’s will to win this election.”

About The Author

V Shoba

•