Once there were three Bellary brothers

Once there were three Bellary brothers

The story of Reddys’ meteoric ascent to economic and political stardom has all the ingredients for a Hindi potboiler. Here is the partly fictitious synopsis of a potential script. Would our story starved Bollywood directors be interested?  

Jojo Puthuparampil

Scene 1: Moment of epiphany (circa 80s)

In a sombre opening shot, the protagonist—a lean and dusky man in his twenties—says an earnest prayer against the dilapidated two-room mud house where he grew up.

As his father, a police constable, has now retired, he has to find the means of livelihood for his family, including two brothers. But there is hardly anything to look forward to for a college drop-out like him in Bellary, a dusty town 270 kms from Bangalore. So he is in desperate need of a miracle, a sudden shower of blessing from god; hence the morning prayer. At the end of the prayer he opens his eyes and in a sudden flash of epiphany decides to take up a lacklustre offer from a local chit fund to be an agent.

Scene 2: Learning the tricks (five years later)

The camera—the only device on planet earth that can travel faster than light—swiftly shifts to capture a close-up shot of Janardhana—our lead character is fondly called so by local people—chairing a board meeting of Ennoble India Savings and Investments India, a shady non-banking financial firm he has set up after spending a few years at the local chit fund.

During his stint at the chit firm, Janardhana has smelled money the way a domesticated lion smells a prey’s blood for the first time. By now he has collected a considerably big corpus from hapless investors, mostly daily labourers, rickshaw drivers and quarry workers, through dubious investment vehicles—ponzy, money chain and exotic chit schemes. His modus operandi is simple: lure the laity by offering stratospheric return on their investments and keep them in the dark as to how these schemes work so that when they eventually bust—which they surely will—he can come up with a circuitous explanation as to how they have failed and why he is not entitled to pay off the dues.

Knowing how media can lend legitimacy to his mala fide escapades, he also publishes Ennama Kannada Nadu, a daily newspaper. The growing richness has brought about palpable changes in his appearance and working style as well—he has put on weight; has entrusted the business’ non-core operations with brothers Karunakara and Somashekara, who have hitherto been making a pittance by executing petty civil contracts; and has roped in Sriramulu, an enterprising local dude, to micromanage mundane challenges while he reserves his time for macro machinations. He considers God as a close ally in the enchanting game of money swindling and continues to offer prayers to ensure uninterrupted divine benevolence.

Scene 3: Changing colours (late 90s and early 00s)

Our protagonist sulks; it is 3 am and he is still awake. The camera can capture the ticking clock, but let’s avoid the clichéd shot of a disheveled table with cigarette stubs and half-emptied whiskey bottles.

Janardhana’s chit fund has gone belly up with complaints of fraud and cheating to the tune of Rs200 crore and defrauded investors have started filing mass petitions. To disentangle themselves from the ensuing legal wrangle, Janardhana and his brothers seek political protection. After flirting with Congress for a while through Sriramulu, who has briefly become a Congress councillor in Bellary, the brothers jump on the BJP’s bandwagon as campaign managers for Sushma Swaraj—who turns out to be their ‘Lady Luck’—in her Parliamentary race from Bellary constituency against Sonia Gandhi.  Sushma loses the battle but the Reddy brothers—one of the trio’s assumed names—win her heart and patronage. 

Under Sushma’s aegis, Reddys, and Sriramulu, who has often been called Sushma’s adopted son, toil to build the BJP in Bellary, a Congress bastion since independence, and adjoining districts. They exploit the infighting in the district Congress; use Sriramulu, who belongs to an indigenous tribe, to woo Dalits who are a majority in the region; and win over villagers with health, education and sanitation programmes and by organising mass marriages. 

In the Bellary City Municipal Council elections, the Reddys’ efforts yield results as the BJP sweeps the Congress aside. The winning streak continues in Assembly elections as the BJP win three seats. Later, in the Lok Sabha elections, Karunakara wins the Bellary seat, wresting it from the Congress. The subsequent zilla panchayat, taluk and town level elections also prove to be a cakewalk for the Reddys and the BJP. Janardhana and his brothers are no more petty local chieftains.

Scene 4: The unbearable lightness of being demigods (mid 00s)

Our protagonist no more considers himself a mortal. He caresses his mirror image in a room full of idols of deities.

In a providential twist that catapults them to the big league, the Reddys foray into mining by buying Obulapuram Mining Corporation (OMC), with mines in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, from a local mine owner for Rs5 crore. Soon iron ore prices start skyrocketing, driven by the international iron-ore export boom, especially the huge Chinese demand preceding the Beijing Olympics—prices soar to Rs3,000 a tonne from Rs200 in just a couple of years—and the Reddys make a killing. They migrate from mopeds to imported cars and helicopters. To get richer, the Reddys transcend partisanship and forge ties with YS Rajashekhar Reddy, the Congress chief minister in Andhra Pradesh; coerce YSR to allot 45 square kilometers of land to build a huge steel corporation in Kadapa, YSR’s home town; join hands with YSR’s son, Jaganamohan Reddy, to set up Brahmani Steels, a Rs25,000 crore steel plant; and secures 3,500 more acres for building a second airport in the district. Back home, at his sprawling mansion—ironically called Kutira or a cottage—Janardhana builds a gold chair worth more than Rs2 crore for reclining during afternoon siesta. To appease the god, he donates a Rs45-crore diamond-encrusted gold crown to the deity at the Tirupati temple.

Scene 5: The art of holding the government to ransom (late 00s)

When the camera zooms in, Janardhana swings in his gold chair. “God is great. He has given me all these riches,” he gleefully says. The receding hairline has become a hallmark of this nouveau mining magnate and larger-than-life political kingpin.

The Congress government in Karnataka led by N Dharam Singh appears shaky and sensing an opportunity the Reddys play a role in sanctifying the marriage of convenience between the BJP and the breakaway JD-S led by HD Kumaraswamy and use their money power to gather the support of MLAs to help the alliance topple the Congress regime. The Bellary brothers rescues the BJP when Yeddyurappa falls out with Kumaraswamy when the latter refuses to part with the CM's chair after 20 months as stipulated in their power-sharing agreement.

The Reddys metamorphose into kingmakers during the subsequent Assembly elections. They, along with Sriramulu, play a crucial role in helping the BJP garner 110 seats—BJP wins 23 seats of the 27 in four districts (Bellary, Davangere, Gadag and Haveri; five seats in the region are won by the Reddy family itself) where the Reddys spearhead the BJP’s poll campaign. And then pay Rs25 crore each to six independent MLAs to buy their support to take the BJP beyond the 117-seat mark for a majority and help Yeddyurappa realise his dream of heading the first BJP government in Karnataka. Yeddyurappa responsively obliges and grants ministerial berths to three of the kingmakers—Janardhana and Karunakara become tourism and revenue ministers, respectively, while Sriramulu bags the health portfolio. Somashekhar, meanwhile, becomes the president of the powerful milk federation in the state.

Conflating money and political muscle with startling brazenness, Reddys virtually transform Bellary into their fiefdom, ensuring that only pliant officers are posted there. OMC encroaches land of rival miners who are coerced to lease land to Janardhana’s company. Reddys extort 30 per cent of the proceeds for every tonne of iron ore extracted by other miners in Bellary district. They extract iron ore from government land as well and spread their illegal mining activities into the neighbouring Anantapur district in AP, disregarding the state boundary. To dodge income tax scrutiny, they transport bundles of currency worth hundreds of crore in trucks to undisclosed locations.

However, their relationship with Yeddyurappa turns vexatious when the chief minister decides to impose a cess of Rs1,000 on every lorry transporting iron ore from Bellary, to raise money for flood victims in the state. When the CM refuses to withdraw the cess, the furious Reddys round up BJP legislators close to them, shift them to posh resorts in Hyderabad and Goa—out of the reach of the CM and Arun Jaitley who is sent by BJP’s central leadership to broker peace—and hold the state government to ransom for two weeks. Eventually, Yeddyurappa bites the dust and is forced to sacrifice a trusted minister and Reddys emerge stronger.

Scene 6: Curt nemesis (present and future)

Janardhana attends the cremation of YSR, who died in a helicopter crash. For the first time in more than a decade, forehead lines betray his doubt in the same providential intervention which has transformed him from a pauper to the most powerful mining baron in post independent India.  

Retribution catches up. Former Supreme Court judge and Lokayukta Santosh Hegde submits a 25,000-page report with damning evidence against the Reddys and Yeddyurappa in the illegal mining scam. The judge’s report says Reddys have donated Rs10 crore to a trust managed by Yeddyurappa’s family members which also sold a piece of land to another mining company for Rs20 crore, far above the guidance value of Rs1.4 crore. It says the illegal mining in Karnataka will deeply affect ecology besides hitting the state exchequer hard. Mining companies in the state, including OMC, have failed to pay mining royalties to the government and encroached forest land, leading to systematic starvation of state-owned mining entities, the reports adds. The Supreme Court takes notice and orders a CBI probe into illegal mining by two companies, including OMC. Yeddyurappa resigns while Janardhana loses cabinet berth and is arrested by CBI.

This open-ended abridged script does not try to provide an answer to what will happen to our protagonist which will be earnestly attempted in a sequel. After all, who can conceive a Bollywood potboiler without a generous dose of suspense?