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A NEW BEGINNING: Swati and Ramesh came back to India in 1998 and thus began the journey of Janaagraha.

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The Justice for Jessica campaign, the battle for a long overdue judgement in the Priyadarshani Mattoo case,a strong Right To Information campaign, CNN-IBN's citizen journalists - India's middle class has amply proved over the past year that it is up and running for causes that matter.

Be it running around for radical reform, lighting candles for justice or garnering support for a long-term change, the great Indian middle class has been there and done it to all. CNN-IBN celebrates the spirit of the middle-class activism in a special series - The Rise Of The Radical Middle.

Bangalore: In many ways it was Swati and Ramesh Ramanathan's idealism that saw this couple leave their successful jobs and cushy lives in the US and come home to India. A successful banker and an architect, the couple decided after 10 years that it was time they gave back something to their country.

"I think that once we left for the US we were like any other typical middle class Indians. We thought about ourselves and wanted to do well financially and professionally. But after having got there and lived there, we understood that personal success is so much driven by a supportive social system,” says Ramesh.

Ramesh believes that he and Swati are lucky that they could come back to India and make a difference.

“We are one in a million in our country who got lucky but in other societies where social system is organised, then the odds are much better. Eight out of 10 people can actually fulfill the dreams and potential of their life. And once you realise that, you feel you have an obligation, you know that you have to go back and make a difference,” says Ramesh.

Swati and Ramesh came back to India in 1998 and thus began the journey of Janaagraha, a people's movement for participatory budgeting in Bangalore.

"We want to make our government work better and in order to do that we need to make our democracy work better. One part of it is to improve the system, get honest people into government but there's another side to it, which is the citizen. We feel that there is a need to get people to realise their roles in this larger process of democracy,” says Ramesh who is the founder of Janaagraha.

The couple wants to “deepen democracy” from what they call “representation to participation”.

“We have a very simple saying for this which is – in the alphabet of democracy don't go from E to F which is elect and forget, stay on the letter E which is elect and engage,” explains Ramesh.

But it hasn't been easy going for the two with cynics at every step questioning their desire to do good.

"There middle class has a thin skin which is that you enter thinking ‘yes you're doing something which is good’, but you also expect somewhere in your mind to get appreciated for it,” says Ramesh.

And it is not that they don’t realise that getting about a public change is not an easy job.

“The rules of public change are quite ruthless which is that you'll get slapped around, people will criticise you especially if the change you want to create is significant. It's a political process at the end of the day and it's good. But when you start off we're all political infants especially a lot of the middle class, so you get hurt and there's a lot of learning there and people question your integrity,” says Ramesh.

But at the same time the couple says that they have never regretted their decision.

“We have been so amazed at the remarkable kinds of people we have met in government and this is both politicians and administrators. And we have never ever regretted our move here,” says Swati.

India may be rediscovering Gandhigiri anew but for Swati and Ramesh, it was what Mahatma Gandhi said several years back, which is the driving force behind Janaagraha - be the change you want to see.