Harvest Of Prosperity Fails To Touch Gowda'S Village

Hardanahalli does not have even a medical centre. All that it boasts of are ramshackle schools up to the seventh standard, a community hall and a century-old Shiv temple.

The sleepy village, which has nursed the champion of liberalisation and Rupert Murdoch, has just a few antennas resting sloppily on tiled rooftops. It shares a postman with nine other villages and a solitary public telephone installed in Gowda's brother's house serves as the village's tenuous link with the world.

Hardanahalli may not need cable television, but it can certainly do with some irrigation facilities. The farmers here have to content themselves with growing poor man's feed such as ragi and potatoes and not the profitable paddy and sugarcane.

 

The village, resting snugly amid picturesque green hills, came into the limelight about six months ago when Hardanahalli Doddegowda Deve Gowda bagged the most powerful post in the country.

The hearts of Hardanahalli natives swell with pride when the village is referred to as the Prime Minister's home. All we want is that our village should be mentioned along with his name. That makes us happy, says an old neighbour Shantamma, who seems content with her lot.

The sleepy village consists of about 120 mud houses, typical of any village in the country. The ambitious Gowda spent most of his formative years here