In 1965 , when Triyugi Prasad, a Lecturer in Civil Engineering at Bihar College of Engineering, Patna University was at the University of Illinois, U.S.A doing his Ph. D., he wrote an unpublished article in the first year of his four-year stay there on ‘Corruption in Public Life)’ , sitting in the reading room of a library at the university where students usually went in the afterhours for doing home assignments. Corruption which had not taken the monstrous proportions then as it has today, was taken for granted and was hardly talked about or debated as a problem. Even then, it struck Prasad as a glaring problem seen from the perspective of what prevailed in the USA, which to him distinguished it so starkly from India in this respect. On his return to India soon on completing his studies at the end of 1968, he wrote an article “India Under Shackles” for its possible publication (it could not be published for technical reasons) in the Republic Day issue of a local English daily. The import of this article was that India was still under the same chains of colonial governance which had bound it for more than a century to facilitate its systematic exploitation, subjugation and degradation by its colonial masters. Coming freshly from a land which had thrown off the same chains more than almost two centuries ago in order to ensure rightful progress, prosperity and happiness to its citizens who, having suffered long years of oppression in their ancestral countries, desired to breathe free and find their destiny in a new nation. The continuing chains binding and stifling India struck Dr. Prasad as its most fundamental affliction giving rise to diverse problems such as corruption. On returning to his parent institution after having obtained higher education and expertise in water resources, Dr. Prasad devoted himself to various activities designed to make an impact on resolution of the complex problems and realization of the immense potentialities related to the water resources of the eastern region of India. He strongly felt that the key to transformation of the eastern region from its prevailing poverty to its potential prosperity lay in water resources and that this key can be effectively operated only by modern knowledge in water resources. Although some notable achievements were made in dispensation of this knowledge, its desired impact on resolution of the water resources issues baffling this region could not be made. At the end of the day, he was convinced that even this failure was on account of the inappropriateness and inherent anti-intellectualism of the prevailing system of governance.
The results of the general elections held in 2004 after the full term of BJP led coalition government under the leadership of veteran and well respected statesman Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a period during which the nation was widely portrayed as ‘shining India’, the rejection of the incumbent Government which had come to power in 1999 with a convincing majority and the coming in by default of a Congress led coalition government to replace it only confirmed the general pattern of election results in which people generally vote against the incumbent government rather than voting ‘for’ a party. Coalition of parties is formed more for jockeying for power rather than for shared ideologies. The inherent and persistent message that comes through these election results is that the change that the people yearn for is ever elusive. Mere change of governments does not satisfy the people’s yearning. In conformity with his long held thinking , this prompted Dr. Prasad to revisit his old passion for desired governance of a free India and to write a comprehensive paper titled “India’s Crying Need for Change of the System of Governance – Call for Action” containing critical analysis of the event, historical perspective, perversities in national life and living as well as illusions of freedom and democracy created by the existing system of governance, features of the existing and desired systems of governance and the instrumentality as well as road map for reaching the goal.
A meeting of six individuals, all academics with diverse disciplinary backgrounds such as humanities, science, engineering and medical, five of them having been former vice chancellors of universities in Bihar was called on 22nd January 2006 to deliberate on the ideas contained in this paper as well as on a follow up action. The participants of the meeting found the basic idea contained in the paper sound in principle and of great import for India in action and they felt it was ‘high time that the nation be launched on such as course’. They accordingly signed a Declaration of Endorsement to this effect. In the same meeting, it was resolved that a missionary movement for the change indicated in the paper be launched under the leadership of Dr. T. Prasad with immediate effect with the attendees constituting the Core Group of an association named as “ Forum for Change of the System of Governance”.