Governance is not about institutions but about people being empowered to engage with them.

 The angry young man image of 'Amitabh Bacchan' in the cinema of the 1970s was symptomatic of the general disillusionment that plagued the masses in general and youth in particular in India. It was a symbolic resentment of the people against the failure of the state to convert the top-down political democracy into the bottom-up social-economical democracy. It was the latter that would have really empowered the hitherto marginalised majority of India.

At the midnight of 14th and 15th August 1947, India had a 'Tryst with Democracy'. The political elites of the national movement showered the impoverished masses with a 'Gift'. The gift was a 'Structural' democracy, freedom in a 'political sense' and a gift of its own government. Even after 65 years of independence, it is disheartening to note that we are still struggling to make India a functional democracy, to gain freedom in a socio-economic sense and establish a 'good-governance instead of a mere elected government.

What is true about the organic development of a plant is equally true about a democracy of governance. A plant gets its vital nutrients and life-saving water from the ground, through its roots. Similarly, a sustainable and functional democracy gets its sustenance from the ground level empowered citizens, through the roots of institutions and structures of governance. It is never the other way round. However, it was this universe with which the newly forwarded 3rd world countries missed, in their wad rush to 'import' the top-down Westminster style democracy in their countries.

A great German philosopher Inmawel Kant in his Deontological treaty has considered Human beings as an end in itself. Human beings are not nearly a means to achieve an objective. For Gandhiji, the ' customer was the king' while Nelson Mandela advocated that the education of the masses is the most potent weapon to achieve social change. These ideas have our central theme. It is the firm belief in the virtue of putting people at the centre of all policymaking and policy implementation. It believes that people are the best judge of their own destiny. It is unfortunate that while the Magnus opus of Kautilya on statecraft ie ' the Arthashastra' had enjoyed a duty upon the king to deliver 'good governance to the masses, the 20th century, Westminister style democracies in the 3rd world countries have often confused government with governance. The case of many communist nationals is not different. they simply did not provide enough space for civil society articulation. The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China is a case in the point. The french revolution of the 19thC had given a new architecture in the political domain. People, in general, were promised to rewrite their own destiny, France become a republic. It had a great influence on the political-administrative design of most of the European countries as well as that of America. Based on that structure and intuitions were designed in the 20thC in Europe for fructifying the new spirit of political education such structures were by and large based on the western principle of structural bureaucracy, which was static and rules bound. Since the concept evolved in Europe and US, so even the static structures and institutions of democracy were maintaining strong linkages with the desires and aspirations of the people. Also from the active citizenry which political socialization through the enlightenment philosophies like Rousseau, Martesqueav and Voltaire, including the effect of Renaissance, the market had played a significant development sole, Thus even a rigid political structure did not fail as there were present other 'organs' to take care of the developmental soles.

However, in the case of 3rd world countries including India, the context was vastly different. here the Westminister modelled democracy was important and fed from the top into the threat of unprepared masses. The masses were supposed to 'consume' it without realizing what it was. No doubt the static structure quickly gave in to the demands of dynamic realities. Instead of the intended empowerment of the masses, a class of political elites developed. After 73rd and 74th amendment act, although grassroots democracy has certainly taken deeper roots, simultaneously, we are seeing the appearance of 'Sarpanch Patils' and 'SUV Sarpanch' who are the new generation of political elites. Ironically, Gandhiji could foresee this anomaly in his own lifetime. No doubt he was a firm believer of the grassroots democracy based on village empowerment. Hw advocated the ancient Indian model of village democracy, where each village was a 'little republic' Unfortunately, the top-down structure of democracy has kept the people at the periphery and treated it as were passive recipients.

After the massive failure of the nascent institutional democracy in most of the African and South Asian countries,  research was conducted to diagnose the real disease. Based on this research, the world bank in 1990 came up with the concept of ' Good Governance the causal factor of these object failures were non-participation and non-inclusive rights and static politico-administration architecture. S passive recipients tended to be marginalized and voiceless, such citizenry could never ensure effective chicks and balance over the functioning of the static. It was realized that the greatest investment that those counties were needing was the investment in Human Capital and social capital wore then the investment required in financial capital or infrastructure.

In fact, what is there for public policy, holds equally good even for the MNCs and Market. Bill Gates once said that he can create 10 more Microsoft without much difficulty, provided he was given only some of the top talents of the parent company. It underlines the Importance of human capital over financial capital. The Apple (i-pad/i-phone) founder steve jobs was a firm believer that the most important asset of an organisation was their human capital. That is why in contemporary Human resource management there is a strong emphasis on feedback mechanism, 360 degree and 265 days learning, participative decision making etc. Thus the focus is on enriching and empowering people. This shift is analogous to the policy of the community development program of the 1950s in India. It was an abject failure due to the top-down bureaucratic let and bureaucratic centric approach. This was criticized by the subsequent Balwan Rai Mehta committee which recommended a participatory and people-centric approach. However, it was not until 1993, that a constitutionally mandated local self-government was created to empower people to discuss, design and implement policies based on their unique context.

However, even after the completion of 20 yrs of the Panchayat Raj system, can see vast cleavage into the empowerment pattern of people in India. Eg. the 'Parsi' community of Mumbai has in 1012 raised the criteria of defining a Parsi person Poor if his monthly income is below Rs90,000/- whereas for a terrible man in the remote forest of central India, governance and democracy visit once in every 5 years at the time of election. so governance means different things to different people. It was precisely for empowering the hitherto disadvantaged sections of our society, that the affirmative action (reservation policy) was provided in the constitution. The social information that was leapt upon a large section of our society based on caste hierarchy, patriarchy etc had systematically socially excluded a large chunk of our population from mainstream life. Thus were enfranchisement was not adequate for a perpetually disempowered person. No doubt this provision has helped, but to a varying degree. In south India, due to the influence of the backward class movement, empowerment and awareness had been much more as compared to north India. Similarly, while both a woman and an SC has reached the highest position of the president of India, still to date neither a woman nor an SC has reached the position of Cabinet Secretary of India. 

As rightly pointed out by Amartya Sen, economic growth without affecting the masses at the bottom of the pyramid are meaningless. Eg the per capita income of our next-door neighbour Bangladesh is nearly half of India but its fairs well on all the HDI parameters like (IMR, MMR etc). Interestingly, in the initial years of 1990 the pre liberalization, there was not much difference in the per-capita income of the two counties while India went for creating new institutions like markets, stock exchanges, regulatory bodies etc. Bangladesh in spite of wager resources forced on grass-root empowerment through a successful network of SGHs. It was mostly women SGHs in the rural areas with active support from the world-renowned 'Gramin Bank' of Md. Yunus. This is what a great root empowered citizen could achieve, that the institutions of economy count did not achieve in India. Even in our own country, the successful HDI indicator of Kerala in spite of only moderate economic growth, in comparison to economic engines like Haryana and Punjab is an eye-opener reality. It is thus extremely important to realise that governments must work down the ladder from the state capital down to the Gram Sabha. otherwise, a paradox like the 1960s could again explode. In the 1960s while northwest India under the impact of the green revolution was empowered down to the village level, at the same time a dichotomy made an appearance in central est India in the form of Naxalism. It was a symptom of a larger disease, called a perpetual marginalization of the Adivasis.    

The world is full of such examples, where prolonged disengagement of the state with its own population has created a social volcano, which when bursts is hard to contain. eg the issue of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka is a manifestation of continuous marginalization of the ethnic Tamil populace. eg Balvtic nationalism is a consequence of their crystal, attic disempowerment by their Punjabi and Sindhi c0citizens. The very basic and bifurcation of Bangladesh from Pakistan was due to the disengagement of west Pakistan from its own citizens in the eastern part. Similarly, in China, the Xinjiang and Tibet provinces are systematically subdued leading to the rupture of the very idea of the 'One China ' policy.

Real Governance is an 'umbrella concept, it is analogous to a mother's heart, wherein it accommodates and appreciates all her children, let it be white or black, boy or girl, Brahmin or Dalit, tribal or city dweller and irrespective of religion etc. If people are marginalised for a prolonged period of time, then disruptive forces will one day or the other dismantle the established institutions and architecture. what happened in 1789 during the french revolution was 'not a one-off event' 190 years later it happened in Iran in the form of the culture of cultural institutional created by static institutions created by Shah of Iran failed to satisfy the urge of the people for development. The assertive Civil society in contemporary times is nothing but a reminder the people want their due space in the governance architecture. they want to shape modify, reshape their destiny. The 'occupy wall street movement', 'the Arale spring', the 'Nirbhaya protest' in new Delhi is simply a Hartinger of a much larger assertive citizen waiting to make an appearance in the future.

Based on that few recommendations (India-centric) may help in putting things in the right perspective;

• Transform the structural democracy into a functional democracy
• Realize that investment in human capital is the best form of capital
• Treat all segments of citizenry with respect and empower them, focusing especially on women, old age citizens, persons with disability, people engaged in manual scavenging etc.
• Decentralized power to the lowest possible level
• Make efforts for ensuring secondary education is the fundamental right
• Confer Schedule 6 status on the tribal area of central India for more autonomy 

Eventually, it is high time to accept that just like what Galileo had realized that it was the Sun which was at the centre of the solar system, and not the Earth, similarly, the political class must also accept that it is the people who are at the centre of the governance and not the other way round. Thus empowered citizenry is the causal factor for the governance as well as the governance and not another way around. Galileo was ostracized for speaking the truth, just like Nelson Mandela suffered, but finally, institutional and structural governance had to accept the merit of keeping the people at the centre. Let this synergy be exploited for the natural gain of all; because real democracy is not what it is given from the top. democracy has to be claimed and repeatedly reclaimed by the citizens for its true survival and growth.