[ಕನ್ನಡ ಅನುವಾದ ಶೀಘ್ರದಲ್ಲೇ ಬರಲಿದೆ — Kannada translation coming soon]
HISTORY of MGP through compilation of articles. 1989 to 2026 Background to start MGP. When I left for higher studies to the US soon after my graduation from IIT Madras, it was my desire to return to India to get involved in India’s development. I did not have plans to work there. Since I am from a village environment, I was not familiar with the US. Since many of classmates were applying for higher studies I just followed the herd without having any long term plan. My desire to get involved in India’s development might have been partly influenced by my maternal grand father’s brother U Srinivas Mallya, the architect of modern Dakshina Kannada. Whenever he visited our house in Bantwal, or I visited his house in Mangalore I must have been impressed with visitors waiting on him. My mother used to tell stories about his sacrifice during freedom struggle, how he lost all his wealth, hiding from Britishers to avoid jail, creative ways of getting projects approved to help the people, his close relationship with the top leaders of India starting from Pandit Nehru, role played by him in elections/selection of Chief Ministers of Karnataka, etc. In the back of my mind the idea of joining politics to serve India might have been sown as a result of this. Otherwise our business family was far away from politics but for my uncle running for panchayat member once. After I got my Master of Science in Industrial Engineering, I got a job offer from Conoco in their computer department. This was to last just for a year. However once I started to save money, idea of returning was influenced by saving the proverbial one lakh. However as lakhs started getting accumulated in the bank, and regular promotions were given in the company, day of return got postponed. As I started to learn more about the US prosperity and high standard of living, I used get disturbed by our abject poverty. I used to feel that I am “wasting” my time by prolonging my stay in the US. Any seminar I attended, any meeting I participated, any training program I participated in, I was always thinking how can I apply what I learn to contribute to India’s development. Besides my job at Conoco, I started to pursue my post
graduate degree at University of Houston. It delayed my return. Finally I completed my Ph.D in 1973. Just then I managed to get transferred to our international operations giving me a chance to learn about Europe and also to live in London, Milan, Dublin, and visit European countries. When I saw how even the poor live better than our middle class in Europe, and despite lower per capita GNP than the US, how Europeans were leading a less stress free life, it gave me an insight into the formula for “happy” living. We need some minimum income, but we should not be a slave to earn more for the sake of having greater wealth. My return was now postponed to complete my European assignment. When I returned from Europe, my mentor got promoted as the President of Conoco and that delayed my return again. Soon after I got selected to be sent to a “charm school”, which will put me on a path to become a top executive of the company. Still soon after completing the training, I decided to quit and return to India despite the possibility of being able to climb the corporate ladder. At that time I had two goals of returning to India. One was to fight corruption and another was to convince the professionals that unless they enter politics, our democracy will be hijacked by the criminal elements. For that I was prepared to enter politics to walk the talk though my family did not agree with me and were even shocked with my decision. While in the US, I wrote to Rajiv Gandhi expressing my desire to enter politics and referred to the role of my grand father’s brother Srinivas Mallya and also his friendship with his grand father. I did not hear from him. After returning to India, I contacted high profile MPs from my area, Oscar Fernandez and Janardhan Poojari. Neither of them gave any encouragement and also when I learnt about their political philosophy (loan mela for example) I did not feel comfortable of working under or with them. Otherwise I had planned of joing Congress Party. Because of the contact I had established with the the then India’s ambassador to the US, Bajapai (he was principal secretary to GOI), he had sent my CV to oil company heads. I got an invitation to join TERI from R K Pachauri, from Col Wahi , Chairman of ONGC, Chairman of IOC, and Chairman of GAIl. I declined all the offers politely. But offered my free consultation to all of them. Only ONGC accepted my offer. They appointed me to be a member of their exploration committee and also asked be a resource person for their training program in Dehra Dun. Since I was familiar with the corruption while importing and exporting oil
products by IOC, I was more interested to help IOC. But the finance manager declined my free offer impolitely by stating they have dime a dozen consultants. It may be useful to mention how I selected Mysore. My obvious choice would have been to select Dakshina Kannada since I am coming from there. However since Mangalore still did not have a well developed University, I thought that by starting my activity in Mysore, i will have easy access to a student body which would be interested to get involved in nation building. Again this was mostly influenced by my exposure to University life in the US during the Vietnam war and how University students played a critical and substantive role in changing the destiny of the US. I was impressed with the sacrifice made by University students to uphold the principle of peace. I thought that Mysore University students will also be idealistic like the US. What an illogical, naive and downright wrong assumption I had made. While I was getting familiar with Indian oil industry which was not all that difficult because of many years in international oil industry, I was exploring ways of entering political battle field in Mysore. I gave up as I mentioned of joining the existing political parties when I saw the background of their leaders. It did not instill any interest to work with them. It was 1987 and Consumer Protection act had just passed. Having experienced how consumer is the king in the US and also having studied the war fought and won by Ralph Nader against the mighty GM, I thought that by starting a consumer movement in Mysore, I will get a perfect chance to expose corruption while helping the consumers. But how to start a consumer movement in Mysore where I do not know any one and many have a negative attitude towards a returning NRI? I was given the names of two Dr. H A B Parpia, former Director of CFTRI and Dr. Thirumala Rao, the President of local Consumer Protection NGO who may be able to help me to get involved. During a preliminary meeting I had with these two it was decided to call a meeting of all those who may have interest in consumer protection, environmental protection and any kind of social work. During the first meeting when we discussed whether to start a new organization or to support an existing organization almost the unanimous opinion was to start a brand new one. Thus the idea of Mysore Grahakara Parishat came about. Later when I learnt about the complex political and social relationships between the already functioning NGOs, I was able to appreciate the need for starting a new one. Even before the formal launching of MGP on March 15th, 1989 we started to take up some projects. One of them was to support the hunger strike by one of the
activists belonging to an NGO interested in protecting the rights of KSRTC commuters. He had attended MGP meeting earlier and since we knew that KSRTC was not consumer friendly we decided to support him. However later we learnt about his hidden agenda and decided to be more careful in whom we support. It was the time when there was no awareness of the harmful effects of using leaded petrol. We wanted the government to stop adding lead additives as many developed countries had done. Emission of leaded petrol gives rise to mental retardness specially among the children and we wanted to highlight this problem. We printed thousands of pamphlets and distributed them through petrol bunks. Mysore media gave us good publicity. We had asked us join in our protest march to DC’s office from K R Circle. We were expecting more than 1000 to join in our protest march. To our total disappointment there were exactly five. One of them was my young son, 12 years old and another was an auto driver. When he learnt how leaded petrol would harm him, he decided to join our march. But one good thing that came out of the march was one of the five who joined our march became the future President of MGP. Prof Ananthswamy, a retired principal of an engineering college had heard about our protest and decided to support us. This protest march taught us one lesson early in the beginning of MGP’s history. Just because media gives wide publicity, we distribute thousands of pamphlets, and the topic is of critical importance to the health, we cannot expect that the public will automatically support the cause in Mysore. There is still a need to contact those who may be inclined to participate individually and invite them personally. Otherwise any protest will be a flop. Inauguration of MGP. Inauguration of MGP on March 15th, 1989, World Consumer Day was unique in some respects. Event took place in one of the halls of CFTRI. There were no chief guests and no presidential talk. There was no stage. There were some chairs placed in front of the participants. All were given the chance to talk. Despite not being recognized as chief guests, Chirajivi Singh, IAS who was then the Director General of ATI and V P Baligar, IAS who was at that time the DC of Mysore participated in the inauguration. Chiranjivi Singh to encourage our NGO activities even agreed to become a member of MGP. Harsh Kumar Gowda who later got elected as MLA also attended more to find out what this NGO will be able to do rather than to help us. In the beginning MGP did not have even an informal rule not to encourage politicians to join MGP.
MGP’s registration process is worth recalling. We knew that there was a lot of corruption in the registrar’s office. We wanted to experience first hand the problems faced by the general public. While submitting the application, we informed the official in charge that they are the public servant and we are their true master. They are to serve us. We can understand if they ask us to come back again to make any corrections once. But if it is more than once we will not accept it. To be expected when we went after a week as suggested by the office, we were told that there are some mistakes in our submission and we need to correct them. We readily agreed and asked them again that when we submit the correct form we expect to get our registration without having to come again. They agreed. When one of the meeting attendees of MGP, former MLA Jaydevraj Urs came to know our problem with the registrar’s office came forward to help us using his influence. We thanked him for his help but declined it politely stating that as an NGO we want to get our work done without any help or influence so that the general public can also get their work done without having to pay bribe. When we went the second time after submitting the corrected form, we were told that it was not ready since it has still some mistakes. Then we told the official that we will complain to the DC. To our luck there was V P Baligar, a no non sense civil servant. When we learnt about our problem, he called the case worker to find out why our registration was not completed. He put the blame on his superior. His superior was called and he put the blame on his boss who was also called. Then he told all of them that they are there because of the public and their duty is to serve them. He ordered them to give our registration paper that day itself. Well we got our work done that day without paying a bribe and also without using any influence. The sad part is that the registrar’s office has corrupt practices even today. Who is responsible? Partly it is the officials. But the larger share of the blame falls on we the public. We do not exercise our rights and we are ready to give bribe to get our work done. Major activities of MGP From the launching of MGP, it started to work with all the important government agencies, departments, institutions to convey the message that in a democracy we the public are their true masters and they are our servants. Where ever we went, and how so a high office it may be, our constant theme was that public are the real masters and without delay and harassment, they should serve us. We interacted with the following:
1. Police (in improving traffic in the city which was mostly led by late Dr. Parpia). 2. Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board ( to improve quality and quantity of water supply, to reduce illegal connections, to improve revenue collection so that consumers can be better served, exposing corruption in water supply operations). 3. Mysore City Corporation (Food adulteration detection, garbage clearance, park maintenance, property tax collection, implementation of 73 rd and 74 amendment to the constitution in true spirit, stooping draining sewage into Kukkerhalli lake). 4. Mysore Urban Development Authority (in several Comprehensive Development Plans, preserving lakes). 5. Karnataka Pollution Control Board ( to ensure the clean air and to stop the emission coming from burning of high sulphur fuel oil by Vikrant, Shimoga Steel, etc, stopping the working of lead emitting factory in Hebbal, stopping of drainage water getting mixed into drinking and other water body, monitoring of the emission standards for air). 6. KSRTC ( constantly interacting with the management of KSRTC to help serve the public better, taking surveys of consumer problems, promoting competition to KSRTC) 7. Deputy Commissioner’s office ( improving PDS kerosene and better operations of PDS shops in the city) 8. RTO ( to streamline the issuance of driving license to reduce corruption), CESCOM (earlier KEB to improve power supply and to reduce corruption involved in getting connection) 9. Forest department (planting of trees, preserving trees, promoting greenery in and around Mysore, planting of trees in Chamundi Hills), 10. Museum of Natural History in Mysore ( spreading awareness about environment). 11. Consumer Courts ( monitoring their operations, assisting grieved consumers to file cases). 12. ATI ( interacting with the trainees to spread the message of we are masters and they are servants). 13. Education department ( to improve educational standards, spread consumer awareness, getting recognition for well run schools without having to pay bribes). 14. PWD ( improving road laying, better transportation) 15. Educational Institutions (To promote studies to help the city like revenue enhancement project by collecting data on rents on MCC properties by Institute
of Development Studies, study of city’s traffic by NIE to make long range plan for the city transportation, holding awareness programs on food adulteration) 16. Public Sector Oil companies (served on oil advisory committees to improve LPG and PDS kerosene supply) 17. Railways (served on railway advisory committees to help the railway travellers, to put pressure on railways to serve the public better, constantly interacting with the railway officials whenever we have consumer friendly managers). 18. Postal Department ( interacting with the department officials to help serve the consumers better) 19. K R Hospital ( improving operations of the hospital to give better treatment, fighting corruption, complained against the bribe to be given to release dead bodies) It will not be an exaggeration if I write that there is not a single item or topic on which we did not work to fight corruption and to help the government agencies to serve us better. To promote consumer friendly relationship we tried to recognize those merchants who serve consumers betters by giving them a plaque, Friend of Consumers. This idea was influenced by the US better business bureau. However this concept did not succeed in Mysore. It is impossible to find any shop who can satisfy all of the consumers all of the time to give 100% satisfaction. Still if MGP had enough dedicated volunteers to identify merchants who are reasonably consumer friendly it would have promote better standards and served the consumers better. MGP could have received complaints against those recognized merchants and helped to solve those problems without having to go through the consumer courts. The first two years MGP gave Friend of the consumer and Enemy of Consumer awards to outstanding government bodies and private companies. Because of the lack of support from the public, they were discontinued. Over the years MGP has worked closely with like minded NGOs to promote Mysore’s development. They are: Parisara, Mysore Lok Swaraj Andolana, Consumer Education and Environmental Education Trust and Mysore Youth Forum. Unfortunately none of them survived beyond few years. Parisara
In its short existence of less than 8 years, Parisara served Mysore well. It conducted several seminars on environmental protection to students, educationists, general public on the importance of protecting Mysore’s environment. Even before climate change became well known and has come to the international agenda, Parisara spread the word in Mysore to concern about it. During many van mahotsava celebrations Parisara was responsible for planting hundreds of trees where ever there was government vacant land – in and around DC’s house compound, ATI, TB sanitorium on KRS road, on Chamundi Hill, in and around Lalit Mahal Hotel, along several road sides in Mysore. When ever a tree was to be felled down without the permission of the forest department, Parisara was there to prevent such illegal felling. One famous story of its creating awareness of preserving trees was when MCC allowed the chopping of trees prior to felling them subsequently along JLB road to facilitate traffic. Parisara organized 12th day rituals like they do when people die according to Hindu customs to mourn their untimely death. It certainly caught the attention of Mysoreans. Many environmentalists of the city participated in the mourning ceremony led by the chief conservator of forest Dr. Kushalappa. When MCC gave permission to fell large and some even 100 year old trees near the race course Parisara organized a “appiko” protest by involving students from different colleges of the city (Maharani’s, and Yuvaraja’s and Sharada Vilas colleges were leaders in this movement and some of the students who have participated in the movement still recall their old memories with great appreciation of Parisara’s contribution). Most of the success of Parisara should go to Eashwar Prasad, supposedly a graduate engineer who worked exclusively for promoting Parisara day and night. Unfortunately the way he parted his way from Parisara was distressful. He wanted to buy a vehicle for his travel which was totally understandable. However other members felt that it was a luxury. Because of this disagreement he left the organization and since he was a key person, activities of Parisara came to an end. Another person who should get our unqualified admiration for all the good work done by Parisara is former Chief Conservator of Forest, Dr. Kushalappa who was always to support any and all of the initiatives of Parisara though he was a government official. How we wish that when forest officials are given training, they would teach about him as a role model to follow. He was another of the unsung official of the city. Consumer Education and Environmental Protection.
Consumer Education and Environmental Protection Trust was started mainly because of the initiative of Dr. H A B Parpia to support the work of MGP. The trust was modelled after Ahemadbad’s Consumer Education and Research Center’s trust. Though CERC is a registered body like MGP, most of the funds were chanelled through its trust to get better control of spending. It was felt that since registered body can be hijacked by some interested small group of activists (it is unfortunate part of our society that majority of people with good intentions do not raise their voice against a small group of people who are interested to destroy an institution for their personal benefit), it would be better to protect MGP’s funding through CERC. As an idealist and very naive, I argued with Dr. Parpia that since want to fight corruption by being a model, we should not take recourse to such strategies. We should show that MGP’s majority will not allow a minority to hijack MGP later days. However I agreed to go along with Dr. Parpia. In the event, MGP did not succeed in raising huge funds and CERC had funds mostly donated by Parpia and myself. Finally we closed it down and transferred its amount to MGP as per the rules of the trust. Mysore Lok Swaraj Andolana Mysore Lok Swaraj Andolana was the informal political wing of MGP. Since from the beginning it was decided that MGP will keep away from politics to gain greater credibility and also not to be criticized for taking some political sides. As I mentioned in the beginning one of my goals of returning to India was to encourage honest and competent professionals to take part in politics, I had always expressed my desire to stand for any and all elections when opportunity arises. Without any exception, every one advised me to keep away from politics stating it would corrupt me. My constant argument was that if politics is corrupt, and every leader will be corrupt, why did we adapt a constitution to have our rulers decided through an election. We could have adapted some other form of constitution based on monarchy or dictatorship where no elected leaders are involved in the government. It is to the credit of my friends and confidence in me that when I contested the elections for assembly in 1989 and 1994, I got the full support. However I was asked to resign from MGP’s membership which I did during the election period. I suspect it was more a formality to keep the letter of MGP’s constitution. While some of the members of MGP were taking interest in an informal way in politics, we came across a national level NGO called Lok Swaraj Andolan which was for bringing back better governance and honesty by supporting non-corrupt and honest candidates in the election. Some members of MGP and others interested in good governance decided to register local chapter called Mysore Lok Swaraj Andolan.
During 1994 Karnataka assembly election, MLSA decided to support two independent candidates – one was myself and the other was Sri Dwaraki. Both of us lost our deposit. But it did not discourage MLSA. It continued to function and when MCC election was announced, it decided to support few independent candidates to the election. During my campaign I had raised some funds from the electorate and I could not spend all of it. Whatever was remaining I gave to MLSA to support these independent candidates. Through the media we asked people who are interested to submit their qualifications to contest on the platform of MLSA but as independent candidates. We got only seven of them. None of them met MLSA’s minimum requirements. Still MLSA decided to support five candidates to demonstrate that professionals should show interest in politics and the political party should also try to attract professionals. Many MGP and MLSA members canvassed day and night for MLSA candidates. Of the five one dynamic candidate was a fourth grade passed dalit woman from the slum who had fire in her belly. MLSA members went to the slum and participated in the meetings organized by her. Unfortunately none of our candidates won. All but one lost and the other who got a lost of vote was one who violated MLSA’s principles. There was a rumor that the candidate gave drinks to get votes. Soon after the election he joined a political party. Many felt that it was a wrong move. But I did not find any thing wrong with it. After the election MLSA took up several projects similar to the one taken by MGP. Unfortunately because of internal politics of MLSA members, there were two groups “fighting” against one another. They even went to the court to decide who actually is the legitimate executive members. Finally MLSA got wound up when some key members died. Story of MLSA clearly shows how difficult it is to build and sustain an organization. Mysore Youth Forum MYF was started by like minded youths to get involved in civic problems of Mysore. They were influenced by the activities of “ugly Indian” NGO in Bengaluru. UI took up cleaning parts of Bengauru quietly and it seems to have succeeded in attracting others. MYF also took up cleaning some dirty streets of Mysore and in the beginning being a novelty it got media attention. MGP attempted to work with MYF and launched a campaign to green Mysore by promoting planting of trees during van mahotsava. MYF volunteers dug pits, got saplings from the forest department, got tree guards from Raghulal etc. They did succeed in planting some trees. However when one of the leaders who was the moving force behind the MYF movement moved away from Mysore, it got wound up. None of the MYF volunteers who had worked closely with MGP continued to
get involved. It is not clear why MGP failed to get them motivated to be associated. Major success stories of MGP. 1. Developing a mini forest around Laxmikant Temple. This was a project undertaken with the sister NGO, Parisara. But for our efforts the place around the temple would have been barren. By calling it a smrithivan, we tried to create greater awareness among Mysoreans to plant and protect trees. 2. Exposing rampant corruption in PDS kerosene by undertaking a study of Mysore. Subsequently convincing the government to implement coupon system to streamline PDS kerosene and reduce corruption. The program was so successful, Prof Ananthswamy and myself were ghearaoed by kerosene dealers in front of DC’s office where decision was made to expand coupon system to the entire district. 3. Saving Cheluvamba Park by filing a PIL when an office/residential building was constructed. Credit for initiating this project should go to Dr. Jayaram who took photos of the building as construction was going full speed in the night. 4. Preserving Karanjikere. 5. Preserving Kukkerhalli Kere (We won the PIL against MCC and the University. But MCC continued to send sewage into the lake). 6. Protest against buildings on the canals brining water to Kukkerhalli lake. 7. PIL against Vikrant to prevent from burning high sulfur fuel oil. When they expanded their operations, we forced them to plant trees to protect the environment. 8. Closing down a company which was polluting by handling dead lead batteries in Hebbal Area. 9.Filed a PIL to save People’s Park. We exposed the corruption involved in signing a contract to hand over piece of the land to a private party to construct a library free of cost. As a result of such a PIL, I got a murder threat signed by some one claiming to be close to the Mayor. Maj-Gen Karumbaya was incensed by such a
letter, he went to the mayor’s office in full army uniform and warned him to ensure such letters are not written. 10. We convinced the education department to stop declaring ranks while announcing SSLC and PUC results since ranks do not have any significance. 11. We also convinced the education department to give copies of the answer sheets when students question their marks. 12. MGP organized an aggressive campaign against the construction of rope way in Chamundi hill. So far MGP has succeeded in stopping it. Unless the people are ever ready to join MGP and vigilant, it will not be a surprise if politicians one day succeed in implementing such a project to mar the beauty of the hill. 13. MGP succeeded in preventing the felling of trees along Lalit Mahal road in the name of widening the road to reduce traffic fatalities without having a scientific study of the traffic. 14. Protesting against the potential impact of Ratnahalli Rare Earth Plant to Mysore if proper safety process is not followed. Protest against the construction of coal generation close to Mysore to avoid pollution. 15. By working closely with the editor of Star of Mysore we succeeded in diverting the route of NH 212 coming through Lalit Mahal Road to save crores as well as to save the beauty of the heritage site. The rerouting also prevented the traffic entering the city. 16. MGP has published several annual magazines to inform the public on the state of Mysore by including articles of interest to the public to save Mysore. MGP has published “Has Environmental Bomb Exploded?” One interesting feature of this booklet was the inclusion of six very futuristic paintings by a commercial artist from the US. He had heard MGP’s activity on environmental protection and he contacted MGP office. He asked us what he could do to help our campaign. Since his expertise is painting, we asked him to paint for us. Though he was leaving for the US next day, he worked through the night and gave us six drawings. More than 50,000 copies of this booklet was sold. This helped to generate funds for MGP. MGP brought out a coffee table book, “SAVE MYSORE” which showed how Mysore was and how it is deteriorating now. The goal of the book was to inform Mysoreans on the decline of Mysore
and the need for all of us to get involved to prevent further decline. MGP published a monthly kannada paper, “Grahak Patrike” and was freely distributed to all the members for 20 years. Since there was not any feedback from the members, it was discontinued. Major failures of MGP despite trying hard 1. Conducting more than 3000 food adulteration detection demonstrations to schools and colleges to create awareness of potential harm of adulterated food. For several years protested against not appointing a qualified chemist to take food samples to detect adulteration in the city. MGP even filed a PIL. There has been no result. One of the major failures of MGP. 2. Continuously exposed several violations of building by laws. Some builders paid heavily for their violations. However this has not resulted in builders following building codes in the city. The fact that MGP may expose violations has only helped the officials to demand more bribe. 3. MGP has taken interest consistently in each Comprehensive Development Plans to preserve the old charm of the city and also green belt by studying the draft plans, organizing seminars of the experts, meeting with the officials, writing articles etc. However none of our efforts seem to have much impact. City’s heritage seems to be destroyed by vested interests by capturing political power directly or indirectly. 4. MGP has been trying hard to improve water supply in Mysore. When people died in Eklaya Nagar and other areas because of polluted water, MGP took up their case to highlight their problems. We sold pollution detection kit, got water tested for pollution often, etc to ensure supply of potable water to the city. When under JNNURM 24X7 water project was given to a private party, Tata company JUSCO, we were one of the few to give full support under the mistaken notion that a Tata company will do a good job by assembling top world class experts compared to other alternatives. Unfortunately Tata company was a failure. MGP has been fighting to have an independent professional company to take over Mysore’s water supply from MCC which has shown its incompetence to manage such a complex operation like water supply. 5. It was MGP which had suggested the implementation of Self Assessment Tax system for property tax to improve tax collection. We had suggested
computerization and random checking of tax returns to ensure compliance of tax payers. The latter has not been implemented by MCC for reasons one cannot figure out. MCC has not been successful in collecting the full potential revenues from property tax. 6. While Deve Gowda was the chief minister of Karnataka and had a public meeting, MGP had suggested to break up KEB into five different companies to be run by professional managers along the modern management philosophy to give 24 X 7 uninterrupted power supply. MGP had also suggested to have an independent body to monitor the operations of these monopolies to approve power rates. While both these recommendations have been implemented to a great extent, power supply does not show any improvement. This is mostly because of the government policy to give free supply of power, and also political interference in the operations of the power companies. 7. Original goal of MGP was to secure more than 10000 members for MGP to make it a credible and strong NGO in Mysore to influence good governance. Despite best efforts by active members of MGP during its existence of 25 years, it has not succeeded in attracting more than 100 active members at any given time. Even of the 700 odd life members, many may not even know that they are members of MGP. Still MGP has established gained some amount of credibility in the eyes of the public specially among those who yearn for good governance. 8. Seeing the interminable delay in securing judgements from Indian judicial system which is the bed rock of good governance, MGP launched a campaign on “Justice delayed is justice denied”. MGP held a protest in front of Mysore courts to impress upon the justice system that we need urgent reform to bring about dramatic change to deliver judgement speedily. MGP also met with some of the justices. However MGP did not succeed to make even a small dent in terms of improving the justice system. 9. However among the business people, many do not agree with MGP’s activities and they are critical that MGP opposes all “developmental” projects. This is understandable since their goal is to increase business and earn more profit. They are unable to see that in the medium to long term a city which has old charm, heritage buildings, uncrowded streets, free moving traffic will generate more profit. For politicians more projects mean, better opportunities to get their customary share of the money spent irrespective of what those projects will do to the city. When MGP opposes rope way project, they are upset. When MGP supports an independent body to manage water works they are unhappy to see
they losing control of the budget of water works. When we support web based monitoring system or computerized property tax system they are worried since they improve transparency. 24 X 7 water system is disliked by some of them since it forces every one to have proper metering, less use of water tanks etc. Some outstanding activists who have contributed to the success of MGP. 1. Dr. H A B Parpia. 2. D. K. Ranganathan 3. A K Ranganathan 4. V. Gurushankar 5. Bhamy Shenoy 6. Prof Ananthaswamy 7. Prof. Anandathirtha 8. C V Nagaraj 9. Dr. S A Prasad 10. Maj-Gen Sudhir Vombatkere 11. M. Kaveriappa 12. Lion Ramakrishna 13. B V Shenoy 14. P M Bhat 15. Prof Chandra Prakash 16. Dr. T N Manjunath 17. Prof Ramalingam 18. A. R. Venkatesan 19. Narendra Shah 20. R Narayanan 21. Dr. Uma Shenoy 22. S. Shobana 23. Dr. Ram Prasad 24. V. Mahesh 25. Shyalajesha 26. Venkatesh Kharidi 27. M. M. Shenoy 28. Bapu Satyanarayan 29. Dr. Kodira Kushalappa 30. Srimathi Hariprsad