There is an immediate need for honest citizens to get together and contemplate political action. The intellectual ammunition is all there but statists have this `fatal conceit': in India this conceit is well fortified. Illiteracy is widespread. Economic illiteracy is rampant. Economic nationalism is a religion here. A market-state debate is unlikely to be even understood.

A mass movement that can effectively challenge the statist system will have to keep its central message simple. This message should lead to the formation of a `vision' in the mind of the recipient. This `vision' should come into sharp conflict with the statist vision.

Many have written against the notion that population causes poverty. Lord Peter Bauer sought to `dispel the gloom' that this view of population casts over development issues. Mancur Olson came to Delhi to prove that population does not cause poverty. Therein lies the key.

The simple proof that population causes prosperity leads to an `inversion' of the statist vision -- urban instead of rural; prosperity instead of poverty. No longer does the citizen see a future of little, self-governing villages. They suddenly see cities -- mega-cities. An India with over a hundred Singapores. Highways that Germans would love to drive on. Top quality urban public transportation systems. Homes in well planned and properly equipped suburbs. An economic boom.

This is the soft underbelly of the statist vision. India is hugely urbanised. Yet all its urban areas are disaster zones. Prosperity is generated in urban areas. A nation whose towns and cities are horribly mismanaged, and the transportation links between them virtually non-existent, is not one that will march on the road to prosperity. The focus on urban management will bring in the need for top quality professional expertise. The generalist civil services will have their competence seriously questioned.

Where will the money for the massive investments required in transportation and urban infrastructure come from? It is here that the case for privatisation will find a sympathetic public ear. State-sponsored industrialisation has been financed not only by printing currency but also by diverting resources from public goods like roads. Our roads are a shambles. PSUs represent the public treasure. It must be employed in what the people sorely need. Forget private sector vs public sector or socialism vs capitalism. We disinvest in order to re-invest.

The poor and the middle classes need a single issue: housing. Here, it must be explained that transportation links add to the overall supply of land and bring down real estate prices -- enabling decongestion and the development of satellite towns. Further, that without land ceilings and rent control, the market would provide housing for all -- either on hire purchase or on rent. The urban poor must be made to see that continued rent control will leave them forever at the mercy of the slumlord-politician. The middle class must be made to see that, with sound transportation and the repeal of a couple of silly laws, there is enough money in the banking system to finance a housing boom that will yield a good, clean home for all -- in nice, clean, well-connected towns. Indeed, this is a boom just waiting to happen.

To begin with, we must proceed strictly within the bounds of civic society. Civic society is the counterpart of political society. The latter comprises political parties, politicians, bureaucrats and vested interest groups. This is particularly strong in India. Since political society has let us down, a movement to call to account the failures of the regime -- intellectual as well as practical -- must base itself in civic society. Citizens' clubs, schools, colleges, universities, doctors, lawyers, accountants, managers, journalists, movie makers and `third-sector' institutions based on charity and piety -- these must take part in an urban movement to solve the problems of India by spreading the knowledge that startingly exposes the falsities upon which the regime's policies are based.