THE VISIONARY VOICE
When you have the exact same name as post-independence India’s most prominent political activist and founder of the Janata Party, it’s safe to assume your involvement in national politics might have been ordained without your realising it.
Certainly, it turns out to be what JP Narayan is best suited for. An officer of the prestigious Indian Administrative Services, he mainly worked on agriculture and irrigation technology in Andhra Pradesh, also serving as Secretary under Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao.
However, despite having been in the heart of the machinery of power, he realised that the faults in the governance process were stalling India’s progress – a conviction that caused him to leave the IAS in 1996 and develop a grassroots movement to promote good governance, to place people at the centre of the discussions on economic or institutional reforms. He named his movement Lok Satta – People Power – and started by centering the discourse on the education of citizens on institutional issues such as electoral and voter reforms, along with the Right To Information Act.
In 2006, Dr. Narayan started the Lok Satta Party, shifting its agenda to the political arena. Attempting to counter vote-bank politics, Dr. Narayan was elected as an Andhra Pradesh MLA in 2009 and continues to focus his energies on promoting the cause of transparent, non-partisan governance.
