Badaganamole hamlet is part and parcel of Kuderu taluk of Santhemarahalli Assembly constituency in Chamarajanagar district. Kuderu has a sub-registrar office, a high school, a police station, a panchayat and all other trappings of civilisation.
Barely two furlongs from sub-registrar’s office, a carpet of jelly stones herald the laying of a new road to Badaganamole. Inside the hamlet, the scene is a cross between a war zone and a refugee camp.  Makeshift ‘homes’ under trees house some families, while some others whose huts have been pulled down, await the ‘gruhapravesham’ of their new homes. The whole hamlet is dug up to lay drains. Of course, there is a strict deadline for the contractors to complete the work. The builder - “Kumaraswamy.” The grand inauguration (tentative) - CM’s visit on May 27.
The beneficiaries are a clutch of 140 Upparsetty families, who eke out a living from sale of plastic ropes made from used cement bags. The criterion for selection?  Their stark poverty and zeal for hard work. That the hamlet comes under Santhemarahalli constituency held by Congress is only coincidental. Another 13 families from Handijogi community, engaged in pig rearing, claim to belong to the same hamlet. But they live in exclusion amidst wild shrubbery, as their occupation is not conducive to community living. But they have been surprisingly left out of the ongoing development mela.
The reason? Kuderu Taluk Panchayat Executive Officer Chandrashekariah says all surveys are going haywire and the number of beneficiary families has climbed from 40 to 84. “We have just identified four Handijogi families and they too will be given houses,” he assures. District administration officials, however, deny that the CM’s visit has set off the frenzy of development activity. “We are being proactive and have taken up a series of schemes,” they insist.
But it is only one hamlet—where Kumaraswamy is likely to stay — which is getting all the attention. The rest of Chamarajanagar perhaps has to wait for another CM’s visit.