GPIO reading for external value

Hi,
The GPIO blink program using write operation works for me, which is described here - https://up-community.org/forum/public-ubilinux/2141-tutorial-gpio-i2c-spi-access-without-root-permissions#5724

But now I want to read signal using pin 16 (UP GPIO 18, linux GPIO 23), so I change the above mentioned program like this -

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <getopt.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <linux/gpio.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <mraa.h>

#define HEADERPIN 16

void sleepMillis(uint32_t millis) {
  struct timespec sleep;
  sleep.tv_sec = millis / 1000;
  sleep.tv_nsec = (millis % 1000) * 1000000L;
  while(clock_nanosleep(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, 0, &sleep, &sleep) && errno == EINTR);
}

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
	mraa_init();
	mraa_gpio_context gpio;

	if (!(gpio = mraa_gpio_init(HEADERPIN))) {
		fprintf(stderr, "Error exporting pin %d!\n", HEADERPIN);
		mraa_deinit();
		exit(1);
	}

	/* Check if the binary has root-permissions: if not,
	sleep for 100ms to give udev time to set the GPIO-permissions
	correctly for us to use the pin we just initialized above.
	!IMPORTANT! */
	/* Try uncommenting this or changing the amount of time
	we sleep and see what happens. */
	if(geteuid()) sleepMillis(100);

	if(mraa_gpio_dir(gpio, MRAA_GPIO_IN) != MRAA_SUCCESS){
		fprintf(stderr, "Error setting pin-direction!\n");
		mraa_gpio_close(gpio);
		mraa_deinit();
		exit(1);
	}
	int test;
        while(1){
	       test = mraa_gpio_read(gpio);
	       printf("value: %d\n", test);
               sleepMillis(1000); //Sleep one second
        }
	
	mraa_gpio_close(gpio);
	mraa_deinit();
	exit(0);
}

When I execute the program the value is always 1. I think after boot the gpio becomes high, so it reads value 1 always.
So I change the active_low to 1 to make the reading value to zero (I did: echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio23/active_low)
After that when I execute the program the value is always 0.
Now I connect pin1 to pin16, so that pin16 gets 3.3v, but there is no change in the readings of the program.
It still reads 0.

How can I read external signal using the GPIO in the correct way?
Please help me in this issue.