It was, to be sure, a happening day in the jinxed ‘district’. There was drama, colour, fun, and all that stuff that necessarily make up a VVIP visit. Add to it a dash of tension, and the picture is nearly complete.
Indeed, the much-hyped visit of Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy to this district -- the first ever by a CM in 17 long years -- started off,  true to its ‘reputation’, with some very tense moments, as when the CM’s helicopter forcelanded in a field rather than in the helipad, due to poor visibility.
But, the message the CM sent out, first at the media meet at the Biligiri Ranganathaswamy temple and then at the public meeting at Badagalmole, was loud and clear, if a bit too familiar.
He made all the politically correct noises on development and, of course, the obligatory tirade against the ‘uncaring’ officialdom.
The CM’s zeal, the energy and the posturing may have struck some at least as messiah-like, but the question remained if all the hoopla is going to make any difference to this sleepy, non-descript hamlet (and other villages where the CM has spent nights during his tenure so far); whether the countless other Badagalmoles that dot the length and breadth of the State are getting nothing more than their 15 minutes of fame -- apart from, perhaps, the freebies that flow from PURA (provision of urban amenities in rural areas).
For all the signs of backwardness that leap to your eyes, there are (to be fair to the ‘untiring’ efforts of elected representatives and officials in the last 20 days), ‘islands’ of change -- like concrete structures where thatched huts had been, drainages, the electric poles and so on and so forth.
The festive mood wherever the CM went on Sunday, perhaps, might be read as the harbinger of change that Mr Kumaraswamy spoke about -- of how elected representatives and officials, if they can work in cohesion and “on the ground”, can turn symbols of neglect into model villages. (Some of those ground realities: Half the homes at Badagalmole are thatched huts and 80 per cent of the village has no electricity).
 
The great mela
The blaring mikes on autorickshaws with fluttering JD(S) flags, all the hoardings and flex boards, the colourfully lit roads leading from Chamarajanagar to Yelandur, Santhemarahalli and Badagalmole and netas peeping out from every vantage nook and corner might suggest that an election is under way.
Cub netas falling over each other to catch the CM’s attention and making a beeline to garland Mr Kumaraswamy all through the route, certainly made one sniff -- especially in the wake of Iqbal Ansari’s recent bombshell -- more than just a CM’s visit to a neglected district.

FORCELANDING
Farmers make the most of CM plight
* Sugarcane farmers near Yeriyur made the most of the forcelanding of the CM’s chopper in their fields. After all, they are, metaphorically, in the position the CM found himself in, if only for a while!
* The CM got a “pallakki seve” welcome with a nadaswara team that included, rather unusually a flautist duo playing classical music numbers.
* It was the Poor India on show, as crippled children, farmers facing starvation and worse, unemployed youth in distress as they lined up with their petitions before the CM. 
* The priests of the Biligiri Ranganathaswamy temple atop B R Hills joined the queue with a petition for a hike in their salary (a paltry Rs 400 a month). Their pitch: “Our counterparts atop the Malai Mahadeshwara Temple on MM Hills are paid Rs 5,000 a month.”
* Cultural pageantry at the hills at 2 am rivalled that usually seen even on Shivarathri!  
* CM was welcomed at Ranga Shetty’s house, where he stayed the night, with his wife performing “aarathi.”

THE TOP STORY!
*Rs 25,000 per hectare compensation for sugarcane farmers
*Badagalmole, one of the 12,000 villages selected for “Suvarna Gramodaya” scheme
*Housing for 81 households under Rajiv Gandhi Rural Housing Corporation and “Navagrama” scheme by Nirmithi Kendra
*Rs 16 lakh spent to asphalt road from Kuderu to Badagalmole
*Rs 11.15 lakh for a common workshed for installing machinery units for those making threads out of sisal fibre and plastic cement bags.
*Rs 1.08 lakh for toilets in 90 households
*Total loans up to Rs 26 lakh for 159 BPL households
*“Samudaya Bhavan” costing Rs 15 lakh
*Medical check-up camps