ABSTRACT
Democracies sometimes present us with strange juxtapositions. Humane achievements which, very occasionally, are quite remarkable co-exist with tawdry, selfi sh narrow-mindedness. And the same political actors are responsible for both. Karnataka and the leaders of its Janata Party government after 1985 provide us with just such a spectacle. Tedious, small-minded factional in-fi ghting reached embarrassing proportions. Yet, the very leaders who engaged in factional squabbles introduced one of the most adventurous and successful experiments with democratic decentralisation in the recent history of Asia, Africa and Latin America — an experiment which carried forward the agenda of deepening democracy that Urs had done so much for a decade earlier.
