This paper provides a critical analysis of governance from the grassroots level, highlighting the challenges. Governance is a vital aspect of a society, and it is expected to provide efficient, transparent, and accountable services to the citizens. Grassroots level are the backbone of the society, and their participation in governance is essential for the success of any policy. Governance is the process of decision-making and the implementation of policies and programs by the government to provide essential services to citizens. Governance aims to ensure the delivery of quality services, accountability, and transparency. However, in many developing countries, governance has been criticized for being a top-down approach. This paper deals with the conceptual problems about governance ad studies how the problematique of governance dominates the thinking and functioning of the multidimensional financial institutions as well as the policy making device in India. Secondly, a critique of the concept of governance as used current debates is attempted here. This article argues that the ideology of the project of governance has serious implications for understanding the role of state and of politics because the conceptions of democracy and development have to be subjected to political contestation and negotiation by the citizens, instead of being subjected to the formal institutional perceptions by the credit-giving agencies. This article further argues that it is possible to develop an alternative perspective on governance based on the issues thrown up by the people’s movements at the grassroots level.

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Keywords: Governance, Institutions, Democracy, Policy-Making, Perceptions.