The top-down buttom-up has been a popular term in leftist usage. Like everything else in revolutionary schemes, details are least important compared to the goals and fascination. One was not sure from which discipline this term came up, and what was being researched. Information was scarce, except that one needed to agree that buttom-up is better than the top down.

  I thought it is about organization. The communists discarded stalin and the suffocating experience associated with it,  to embrace Trotsky. That is as if insensitiveness of megastates was a mere aberation. Whatever, what seemed like a straw man,  has almost been resurrected to life by the left collectives. One would be forgiven to assume that this buttom up would be about the organizations and planning process too, that is opposite of stalinism. In this post I had described the top-down to mean :

 The change, this time is to the message rather than the peasant. The planning is no more top-down, 21st century top-down planning is called buttom-up. It is 'revolutionary' - Because the rational  of mega planning is already discredited and the the message of the wannabe leaders lacks construction. The revolutionary, buttom-up process is manned by activists, who sell hope and progress  with  all the ferocity, now that foundations of planned logic lacks clarity.

 Now here is a very interesting article which gives much better perspective and meaning to this top-down and buttom-up thing :

The basic idea of Reaganomics was that the economy grows from the top down. Lower taxes on the wealthy make them work harder and invest more, and the benefits trickle down to everyone else. Rarely in economic history has a theory been more tested in the real world and proven so wrong. In point of fact, nothing trickled down. After the Reagan tax cuts, increases in the median wage slowed, adjusted for inflation. After George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, the median wage actually dropped. Meanwhile, most of the income went to the top. In 1980, just before the Reagan revolution, the richest 1 percent took home 9 percent of total national income. But by 2007, the richest 1 percent was taking home 22 percent.

Obamanomics, by contrast, holds that an economy grows best from the bottom up. Obama's program increases taxes on the top and uses the proceeds to raise the living standard of average Americans by giving them lower taxes, better schools and more affordable health insurance. That may not seem very radical, but compared with the last quarter century it's revolutionary.  

The Indian uses were clearly not of extra tax, though they imposed some more taxes. Therefore  top-down could even be an infatuation, where you could do many things. Essentially its effect would be to create equal the subjects  who would succumb to the particular type machine with a supreme collective, managed by the  rulers of the collective.

Updt :

 Above two ideas on the subject reflects the confusion. Arbitrary uses also mean that this term has become a statement of fashion among the petty intellectuals. Here is some more info on top down and buttom up from wiki. Wiki mentions it through analysis and synthesis. If it is buttom-up is about synthesis, then the article in salon (mentioned above) doesn't get it at all. However the article could be a faith among welfare economists about the meaning of buttom-up, that is to create a buttom-up approach in economy through welfare, and to create a top-down approach in politics and repressive party and govt affairs. From a perspective of sythesis~analysis, a fundamental  collectivist doesn't  have tools for buttom-up, they are limited by their assumptions of analytics. If popular  welfare or political economists use their position to cook up a buttom-up a linier system,  then it is worse than the top-down.

It is worth thinking, if top-down systems are going repressive on the population  when they pretend as  buttom up .