Madhya Pradesh chief minister Mr Digvijay Singh has called for "a radical redefining of governance". Speaking in Delhi at the first Minoo Masani Memorial lecture, organised by the Indian Liberal Group (ILG) on the occasion of the late liberal's death anniversary on May 27, Mr Singh lamented the fact that India is today suffering from overgovernance. "The first half century of our independence we spent on strengthening the apparatus of governance," he said and pointed out that not only did this push up government's salaries and pension bills but "the structure of governance cramps individual initiative and weakens accountability."

To set right this distortion, he said the most obvious thing to do is "to make the juice of democracy flow again through decentralisation and involve the people directly in governance." He drew attention to the fact that "a new architecture of governance" in the form of decentralisation through panchayati raj put in place by late Rajiv Gandhi had "led to the freeing of political space in rural India from its erstwhile controllers in an unprecedented manner". He said this has now "led to a million mutinies of freedom in every village in India".

Paying tribute to Masani, Mr Singh said that reclaiming freedoms was a goal that Masani was "uncompromising about and he suspected every intrusion into the sphere of individual freedom irrespective of the proclaimed objectives of the intruder including the modern Indian state."
That is why, he said, his government was concentrating on empowering the people and entrusting them with responsibility in such areas as education, health and water. He said Madhya Pradesh had schools and colleges managed by local communities, hospitals supervised by Rogi Kalyan Samitis, water managed by Pani Roko Samitis and forests managed by forest protection samitis. Debunking the myth that people are not willing to pay taxes or user charges, he referred to examples from Madhya Pradesh to show that people are willing to pay if they know the money was going to be used for their welfare.

The ILG was started by Masani in 1964 to place before the country an alternative to socialist policies and promote the liberal point of view on issues of the day. It is now engaged in educating the public that liberalism is not only a method of economic engineering but also as a philosophy of governance that promotes a civil society.

Presiding over the function, Mr C.R. Irani, editor-in-chief of The Statesman and a close friend of Masani, said Masani would be delighted at how grassroots democracy, a cause dear to his heart, was being promoted in Madhya Pradesh.

Calling Mr Singh "India's most unusual but sorely needed chief minister", ILG president S. V. Raju said Masani would be having the last laugh that a Congressman was delivering the first memorial lecture in his honour because he had got his priorities right. Masani, he pointed out, wanted a strong state that enforces the rule of law but at the same time a minimal state which concentrates on physical and social infrastructure and on good governance. These are precisely the areas, he pointed out, that Mr Singh is concentrating on and his experiments would have met with Masani's wholehearted approval.