Remembering M Y Ghorpade

The sad demise of eighty-year old M Y Ghorpade in Bangalore marks the end of a class of politicians who believed in governance with a human face. A Cambridge economist and a sibling of the Sandur royal family in Karnataka he was an MLA of Sandur. He was a minister for fi nance, science and technology, and panchayati raj and rural development from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s when Karnataka was ruled by Congress chief ministers like M Nijalingappa, Veerendra Patil, Devraj Urs and S M Krishna.

He had an eye for macro and micro economic situations in the state and as finance minister his inno vative ideas to establish the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology more than three decades ago showed his concern for bringing techno logy to the masses. As a panchayat raj minister his passion to decentralise the powers of the state government departments to the panchayats was well known. He shared his ideas on decentralised finances for local bodies in journals like EPW.