The enduring charm of the Bangalore Derby

 This article appeared in the National Sports Page of Deccan Chronicle

Racing’s Great Unravelling: Politics, Land, Disease and a 40 Percent Noose

 

By Sharan Kumar

 

Horse racing in India is now fighting for breath. From Bangalore’s land battles and arrogant club politics to Chennai’s shutdown and Hyderabad’s disease scare, the sport is being throttled from every direction. Add the hostile 40% sin tax on betting, and the game is now on life support. Mismanagement, government hostility, empty treasuries and no youth interest have turned this once glamorous turf into a slow-motion obituary in real time.

 

Racing never expanded beyond that niche. This is not cricket where a coconut street and a rubber ball create Sachins by the dozen. This is not football where three neighbourhood ruffians and one deflated ball can launch a fan base. Racing demands study and patience and decoding a lead change between the seven-furlong post and the last 400 metres is apparently too much for a generation that can master six trading apps in one afternoon.

 

The tragedy is that those meant to save the sport are not just failing they are watching it die. They behave like mourners admiring wreaths rather than doctors attempting resuscitation. They sit in their rarefied dining rooms believing the world ends at the entry gate. Customer experience was never modernised. New audiences were never courted. The public was tolerated only as long as tote machines rang and elections produced votes.

 

Vision was needed. Vision was the price of survival. When cash flowed like a monsoon downpour they should have invested in permanent assets. They should have bought land. Instead, they lounged on leased race courses planted smack in city centres which eventually turned into the most valuable and irresistible real estate of the Indian urban sprawl. Politicians are not connoisseurs of sport. They see land. They see concrete. They see money. And once land becomes tempting enough nothing on earth can stop bulldozers. The excavators were always coming. Racing simply chose to pretend they would never arrive.

 

Only the Hyderabad Race Club escaped this land trap. The visionary chief minister Brahmananda Reddy told them clearly that leased land was a ticking time bomb and got the club to buy its race course at a throwaway price. Today Hyderabad does not have a land threat. Every other racing centre wishes they had that one page of history.

 

Bangalore meanwhile has behaved like a neighbourhood refusing to vacate even when offered a far better alternative. Land on the new airport road was offered decades ago but the mandarins said it was too far. Members mostly lived within four kilometres and that radius became their sacred universe. A former principal secretary once quipped that this captive electorate could not run a footpath tea stall. This arrogance has poisoned relations with the government which now wants to punish the members rather than protect the sport. The club claimed ownership of the land, lost in the High Court and survived only because the Supreme Court admitted their appeal and ordered status quo. The government has now asked BTC to end the case and move to Kunigal in two years. The club has no capital to build a new racecourse. Reserves were never created. Tote turnover which once touched Rs 2000 crore is now Rs 200 crore and ironically it is bookmaker stall fees that keep the lights on. If one day the clamps come the collapse will be instant.

 

Chennai is no better and in fact worse. The Madras Race Club failed to close the Ooty renewal decades ago and the government terminated the lease. The Supreme Court refused to intervene because a lease cannot be revived fifty years later. The Guindy land issue then came up. Government clearly wanted the land. Club authorities did not press hard for alternate land in time. The consequence is visible now. Lease deed which was to end in 2040 is cancelled possession is taken and entry into the race course area is blocked except to the administrative building. Racing has stopped mid-season. The Supreme Court allowed the government to continue with the eco park and the horticulture department proudly got the chief minister to inaugurate it. Saplings have been planted on the track. That is as symbolic as it can get.

 

The club looks to have given up. The racehorse owners have asked the club to run Chennai racing at Mysore for the remainder of the season because they have lost hope that Chennai can resume! Chennai racing has been stopped in the past but this time the vibes are different because nothing works against a government intent on reclaiming land. Grants of licence are a government prerogative. Karnataka High Court used those exact words in the BTC licensing case. If a government is hostile there is very little oxygen left to breathe.

 

Hyderabad is financially safe. The land belongs to them. Investments were prudent. Reserves are adequate. But even here nature has stepped in for a kick. Glanders has been suspected. Some horses displayed symptoms and died. Samples have gone to Hissar. If even one horse returns positive then Hyderabad racing will go into quarantine for weeks or months. Glanders can transmit to humans so the government mandated protocol will take control. Hyderabad is currently staring at a biological cloud while Chennai is under legal cloud and Bangalore is in a political cyclone. This is a perfect trinity of trouble.

 

Mumbai is the only club that got a thirty-year renewal and permission to build a new swanky clubhouse which they believe will bring in revenue to keep the sport financially sustainable. They came to a deal with the government by surrendering substantial portion of the race course land. But let us not forget that in Chennai the lease was valid till 2040 yet the government terminated it overnight. A signature on a lease is only as strong as the government that stands behind it. If racing does not get political patronage, it means nothing.

 

Add to this mismanagement the hostile 40 per cent sin tax on betting. It is the government’s silent execution. A fiscal guillotine. A morality sermon disguised as a GST slab. That single line item is killing the sport faster than any minister or incompetent turf official ever could.

 

So is horse racing on its lap. Yes. This once glorious culture has lost its battlefield and its commander. The narrative has shifted from equine beauty and adrenaline to a dreary saga of land wars, courtrooms, tax tyranny and ministries that view the turf with contempt, not curiosity.

 

Unless clubs reform urgently, connect with young audiences, expand membership on merit, invest in land while land still exists to invest in, and behave like genuine public sporting institutions instead of private dining societies in fancy blazers, racing will not survive. It will slide into folklore.

The crowds that once thundered down the stands for a neck and neck finish will be reduced to a footnote. A once glorious sporting theatre will shrink into a half remembered anecdote.