Rise of Popular Movements | Class 12 Political Science
This chapter looks at the wave of popular movements that grew across India after Independence. It covers both party based and non party movements, and traces well known struggles such as the Chipko Movement, the Dalit Panthers, the Bharatiya Kisan Union, the Anti Arrack Movement and the Narmada Bachao Andolan, along with what they achieved. It is part of our Class 12 Political Science notes.
Popular Movements
What are popular movements and how do they work?
Three decades after freedom, many people had grown impatient. Their dissatisfaction showed itself in many ways. Through the 1970s, several socio economic groups, including women, students, Dalits and farmers, felt that ordinary democratic politics was not meeting their needs and hopes.
They came together under a number of social organisations to voice their grievances. These stirrings marked the birth of popular movements, also called new social movements, in Indian politics.
Broadly, there were two kinds of movements: those linked to political parties, and those that kept away from party politics.
Party based movements
Party based movements do not contest elections in the usual sense, but they keep ties with political parties so that the demands of different socio economic groups are better reflected in party politics.
Popular movements can be social or political, and the two often overlap. The nationalist movement, for instance, was largely political in nature.
During the colonial period, social and economic grievances gave rise to distinct social movements, such as the anti caste movement. These movements brought some deep rooted socio economic problems into the open.
Such struggles carried on after Independence. The trade union movement was strong among industrial workers in cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata and Kanpur.
Peasants in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh launched large agitations in the early years of Independence, led by Communist parties, demanding that land be transferred to those who tilled it.
In Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and nearby areas, peasants and agricultural labourers continued to struggle under the leadership of the Naxalites, a Marxist Leninist group.
These movements were driven mainly by concerns about economic injustice and inequality. Although they did not hold formal elections, they kept links with political parties, as many of the people taking part were themselves active party members. Party politics helped ensure a more balanced representation of the needs of different social groups.
Non party political formations
Some organisations worked completely outside party politics and did not contest elections. They pursued no direct political power and focused on social service. Through the 1970s and 1980s, many people lost faith in the way political parties functioned.
This disillusionment grew out of the failure of the Janata experiment and the political instability that followed. It was also about the government's economic policy.
After Independence, the model of planned development rested on two goals: growth and distribution. In the early decades, poverty and inequality remained widespread across much of the economy, and the benefits of economic growth did not reach every section of society equally.
Social inequalities such as caste and gender deepened this poverty, and a gap opened up between the urban industrial sector and the rural agrarian sector.
Many groups became more aware of injustice and hardship, and a number of active groups moved away from formal democratic institutions and electoral politics.
There was widespread mobilisation, with students and young activists from many backgrounds helping to organise marginalised communities such as Dalits and Adivasis. Young middle class activists set up voluntary organisations and constructive programmes for the rural poor. These bodies did not contest local or regional office, nor did they back any single party. They came to be called non party political formations.
They believed that the direct and active participation of local citizen groups in solving local problems could be more effective than that of political parties. Many of these organisations received money from non governmental funders, including foreign donor agencies, and critics argued that heavy reliance on foreign funds could weaken the ideal of genuinely local initiative.
The Chipko Movement
The Chipko Movement began in a few villages of Uttarakhand in the 1970s, when the forest department refused villagers permission to fell ash trees for making farm tools, but then allotted the same patch of land for commercial use to a sports goods manufacturer. This angered the villagers, who protested against the decision, and the conflict soon spread across the Uttarakhand region. Sundarlal Bahuguna was among the leaders of the movement.
Their main demands were:
- Outsiders should not be given contracts to exploit the forests, and local people should keep effective control over natural resources such as land, water and forests.
- Low cost resources should be made available to small local industries, and the region should be developed without upsetting the ecological balance.
- Landless forest labourers should be guaranteed a minimum wage.
Women played an active part in the movement. Forest contractors in the region often doubled as the local suppliers of alcohol to the men, so the movement also ran long campaigns against alcoholism and widened its agenda to include other social issues. It won a major victory when the government announced a fifteen year ban on the felling of trees in the Himalayan region. In time, Chipko became a symbol for many similar popular movements that grew up across the country.
Dalit Panthers
Origins
By the 1970s, the first generation of Dalit graduates, especially those living in urban slums, began to assert themselves through a range of forums. Namdeo Dhasal and J. V. Pawar founded the militant Dalit organisation, the Dalit Panthers, in Maharashtra on 29 May 1972.
Dalit organisations fought mainly against long standing caste based inequality and material injustice. One of their key demands was the effective enforcement of reservations and other social justice policies. Dalit settlements within villages often remained cut off from the main community, and social discrimination was widespread.
Legal remedies alone had proved unable to end the economic and social oppression of Dalits. Dalit led parties, such as the Republican Party of India, had not done well in elections. They remained marginal, were often forced into coalitions to win seats, and faced repeated splits. As a result, the Dalit Panthers turned to mass action to secure Dalit rights.
Activities
The Dalit Panthers focused above all on fighting the rising atrocities against Dalits in different parts of the state. Partly in response to such struggles, the government passed a strong law in 1989 that laid down severe punishment for such offences.
The wider ideological aim of the Panthers was to end the caste system and to bring together all oppressed groups. The movement also gave educated Dalit youth a creative outlet as a form of protest. In numerous autobiographies and other literary works, Dalit writers spoke out against the cruelty of the caste system.
The Dalit Panthers took part in some electoral understandings, and they too went through many splits, which led to the group's decline in the post Emergency period. Some of this space was later taken up by organisations such as the Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF).
Bharatiya Kisan Union
The Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) is an organisation that represents farmers and keeps its distance from party politics. Its lineage traces back to farming unions built up by leaders such as Chaudhary Charan Singh, and Mahendra Singh Tikait organised the union's western Uttar Pradesh section on 17 October 1986.
Growth
Around 20,000 farmers gathered in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, in January 1988 to protest against the government's plan to raise electricity charges. The farmers camped outside the district collector's office for almost three weeks, pressing for their demands, and received a steady supply of food from neighbouring villages throughout the protest. The Meerut agitation was hailed as a magnificent show of rural strength, and the farmers taking part were members of the BKU.
The BKU was a leading force in the farmers' movement of the 1980s. Farmers in Haryana, Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh had gained from state led green revolution programmes in the late 1960s, and since then sugarcane and wheat had become the region's main cash crops. In the mid 1980s, the cash crop market ran into a crisis as the Indian economy began to liberalise.
Demands
The BKU put forward a set of demands:
- Higher government fixed minimum prices for sugarcane and wheat.
- Removal of restrictions on the movement of farm produce between states.
- Guaranteed supply of electricity at fair rates.
- Waiver of farmers' loans and a government pension for farmers.
Other farmer organisations across the country raised similar demands. Maharashtra's Shetkari Sanghatana described the farmers' struggle as a fight of Bharat, the rural agrarian sector, against India, the industrial urban sector. This tension between industry and agriculture has been a recurring theme in India's model of development.
Characteristics
The BKU used many tactics to push the state to accept its demands, including rallies, marches, sit ins and jail bharo agitations. Tens of thousands of farmers, sometimes more than a lakh, from villages in western Uttar Pradesh and nearby regions took part in these gatherings. Through the 1980s, the BKU held huge protests at several district headquarters and even in the national capital.
An unusual feature of these mobilisations was the use of farmers' caste ties. Most BKU members belonged to a single community, and the traditional caste panchayats of these communities were used to bring people together over economic problems. This reliance on clan networks helped the BKU survive for a long time and made it easier to raise funds, resources and volunteers.
Until the 1990s, the BKU stayed away from all political parties and worked as a pressure group. Along with other farmer organisations, it managed to win acceptance of some of its economic demands. In this sense, the farmers' movement became one of the most successful social movements of the decade, thanks to the political bargaining power of its members. The movement was concentrated mainly in the country's better off states, where members grew cash crops for the market and often belonged to the communities that dominated regional electoral politics, as with Maharashtra's Shetkari Sanghatana and Karnataka's Rayata Sangha.
Anti Arrack Movement
The Anti Arrack Movement was a spontaneous mobilisation of women in Andhra Pradesh who demanded a ban on the sale of arrack, a cheap local liquor.
Origins
In the early 1990s, women in Dubagunta village of Nellore district, Andhra Pradesh, enrolled in large numbers in the Adult Literacy Drive. Through this, they began to speak about how heavy drinking of arrack by the men in their families was harming health, the household and the wider village economy.
As drinking rose, so did debt. Men stayed away from work, and liquor contractors turned to crime to protect their trade. Women bore the worst of it, as family finances collapsed and they faced greater violence from male relatives, above all their husbands.
The movement then spread rapidly:
- Women in Nellore came together in spontaneous protests against arrack and forced the closure of liquor shops.
- The story spread quickly, and women in more than 5,000 villages held meetings, passed resolutions demanding prohibition and sent them to the District Collector.
- Arrack auctions in Nellore district had to be postponed seventeen times, and the movement gradually spread across the state.
- The simple demand to ban arrack pointed to much wider social, economic and political problems in the region that shaped women's lives.
- Because the state government earned a great deal of revenue from arrack sales, it was reluctant to impose a ban.
In fighting arrack, local women's groups also took up other issues such as domestic violence, and the anti arrack movement merged with the wider women's movement. Groups working on domestic violence, dowry and sexual harassment at work and in public spaces were mostly active among the urban middle class. Over time it became clear that questions of gender inequality and injustice against women were complex. These groups campaigned against dowry and demanded personal and property laws based on the principle of gender equality. During the 1990s, the movement also called for equal representation for women in politics. Women had already been given reservations in local political bodies under the 73rd and 74th amendments, and there were demands to extend similar reservations to the state and national legislatures.
Narmada Bachao Andolan
The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) is an Indian social movement of adivasis, farmers, environmentalists and human rights activists who opposed a series of large dam projects on the Narmada River, which flows through Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
The Sardar Sarovar Project
In the 1980s, a large development project was begun in the Narmada valley of central India. The plan called for around 30 large dams, 135 medium dams and about 3,000 small dams along the Narmada and its tributaries. Gujarat's Sardar Sarovar Project and Madhya Pradesh's Narmada Sagar Project were two of the biggest multi purpose dams in the scheme.
Supporters argued that the Sardar Sarovar Project would bring drinking water, irrigation, electricity and higher farm output to large parts of Gujarat and neighbouring states, along with better flood and drought control. The Narmada Bachao Andolan opposed the dams and questioned the whole approach to development. Building the dams was expected to submerge 245 villages, and about two and a half lakh people would have to be resettled.
Struggles and debates
The movement raised several arguments:
- It asked for a proper cost and benefit study of the country's major development projects completed so far.
- It argued that such a study must take into account the wider social costs of development, including the forced resettlement of affected people, the loss of their livelihood and culture, and the depletion of ecological resources.
- At first, the movement demanded that everyone affected by the project, directly or indirectly, be properly and fairly rehabilitated.
- It questioned the way decisions about mega projects were taken, and said that local communities should have a say and effective control over natural resources such as water, land and forests.
The movement met strong hostility in states that expected to benefit, especially Gujarat, and many critics accused it of blocking development by trying to halt dam construction. The Supreme Court upheld the government's decision to go ahead with the dam, while also directing that proper rehabilitation be carried out. Struggles like the NBA are widely seen as one reason the government framed a comprehensive National Rehabilitation Policy in 2003.
The Narmada Bachao Andolan agitated for more than two decades. It used every democratic method open to it, from petitions and court cases to building international support. It never gained the firm backing of the main political parties, and its journey reflected a growing distance between political parties and popular movements. By the end of the 1990s, many local groups had formed to question the logic of large development projects, and the NBA became part of a wider coalition of people's movements fighting similar battles across the country.
What these movements teach us
These popular movements help us understand democratic politics more fully. They were not stray disruptions or a problem to be solved. They grew up to address gaps in the working of party politics, and are best seen as an important part of our democracy.
They gave voice to new social groups whose economic and social grievances had gone unanswered by ordinary politics. By making sure that varied groups and their demands were better represented, they reduced the risk of serious social conflict and of people drifting away from democracy altogether. In this way, popular movements suggested new forms of active participation and widened the meaning of democracy in India.
Critics often argue that collective actions such as strikes, sit ins and demonstrations disturb the work of government, delay decisions and unsettle democratic processes. Yet these movements raised genuine demands and drew in wide citizen participation, especially of the poor and of socially and economically weaker groups whose voices found little space in the routine working of democracy. That is often why they turned to large mobilisations outside the usual political process.
For a long time, social movements in India have also done important educational work, helping to spread democratic awareness rather than simply causing disruption. The campaign for the right to information is one clear example. Their direct impact on public policy has sometimes been limited, partly because many movements focus on a single issue or a single social group, which makes it easy for their fair demands to be set aside. A healthy democracy needs a broad coming together of disadvantaged groups, and where the link between popular movements and political parties weakens, a political vacuum can open up.
Why it still matters
The questions these movements raised are still very much alive today. The clearest example is the farmers' movement. In 2020, Parliament passed three farm laws, and hundreds of thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, marched to the borders of Delhi and camped there for over a year. The protest was led by a coalition of unions under the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, including factions of the same Bharatiya Kisan Union you have just read about. Rakesh Tikait, a son of Mahendra Singh Tikait, became one of the best known faces of the agitation. After sustained pressure, the government repealed all three laws, and Parliament passed the repeal on 29 November 2021. Farmers have continued to press a demand that goes back decades: a legal guarantee for the Minimum Support Price, or MSP, on their crops. You can see how the tactics of rallies, sit ins and a refusal to align with any one party are almost exactly the methods the BKU used in the 1980s.
The chapter's mention of the right to information also has a real world sequel. That demand grew out of a grassroots campaign in rural Rajasthan led by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, whose public hearings, or jan sunwai, exposed corruption in local works. The campaign eventually helped bring about the Right to Information Act, which came into force in 2005 and today lets any citizen ask the government for official records. It is one of the strongest examples of a popular movement reshaping the law of the land. To see how movements like these connect to democracy, the economy and the environment around the world, you can explore the wider picture on the Learnacy Hub, and revise related chapters through our study resources.