NATURE OF POPULAR MOVEMENTS

1. Chipko movement

• In 1973, the first Chipko movement took place in a village called Mandal. The villagers needed access to a small number of trees but were denied the same.
• It angered them when the same government sanctioned the cutting of trees in a much larger area.
• Led by Chandi Prasad Bhatt, the villagers hugged the trees to prevent deforestation.
• When the tree cutters tried to cut trees, people put their arms around the trees and refused to move. The struggle soon spread across many parts of the Uttarakhand region. Larger issues of ecological and economic exploitation of the region were raised.
• Finally, the government cancelled the permit.
• In 1974, the government announced to auction of around 2000 trees located near the village Reni in Uttarakhand. Men and women gathered in a peaceful assembly to protest against this decision.
• Gaurvi Devi, the head of the Mahila Mangal Dal, led a group of 27 women to the location and started hugging the trees when the
• As this event had overwhelming female participation, it began to emerge as a movement by women for forest rights. Such people followed the Gandhian principles and practised Satyagraha as well.
• Women’s active participation in the Chipko agitation was a very novel aspect of the movement.

2. Party based movements

• Popular movements may take the form of social movements or political movements and there is often an overlap between the two.
• The nationalist movement, for example, was mainly a political movement.
• These movements are based on the loss of faith in existing democratic institutions or electoral politics.
• Students and young political activists from various sections of society were at the forefront in organizing the marginalized sections such as Dalits and Adivasis.
• These movements did not participate in elections formally. And yet they retained connections with political parties, as many participants in these movements, as individuals and as organizations, were actively associated with parties. These links ensured a better representation of the demands of diverse social sections in party politics.

3. Non-party movements

• Many of the politically active groups lost faith in existing democratic institutions and electoral politics.
• They therefore chose to step outside of party politics and engage in mass mobilization to register their protests.
• Students and young political activists from various sections of the society were at the forefront in organizing the marginalized sections such as Dalits and Adivasis.
• The middle-class young activists launched service organizations and constructive programmes among the rural poor. Because of the voluntary nature of their social work, many of these organizations came to be known as voluntary organizations or voluntary sector organizations
• Such voluntary sector organisations continue their work in rural and urban areas.
• However, their nature has changed. Of late many of these organisations are funded by external agencies including international service agencies.
• The ideal of local initiatives is weakened as a result of the availability of external funds on a large scale to these organisations.

4. Dalit Panthers

• By the early nineteen seventies, the first generation Dalit graduates, especially those living in city slums began to assert themselves from various platforms.
• Dalit Panthers, a militant organisation of the Dalit youth, was formed in Maharashtra in 1972 as a part of these assertions. In the post-independence period, Dalit groups were mainly fighting against the perpetual caste-based inequalities and material injustices that the Dalits faced despite constitutional guarantees of equality and justice.
• Effective implementation of reservations and other such policies of social justice was one of their prominent demands.
• Dalits faced collective atrocities over minor, symbolic issues of caste pride.
• Legal mechanisms proved inadequate to stop the economic and social oppression of Dalits.
• Dalit Panthers resorted to mass action for assertion of Dalits’ rights

• Activities of Dalit Panthers mostly centred around fighting increasing atrocities on Dalits in various parts of the State.
• The government passed a comprehensive law in 1989 that provided for rigorous punishment for atrocities against Dalits.
• The larger ideological agenda of the Dalit Panthers was to destroy the caste system and to build an organisation of all oppressed sections like the landless poor peasants and urban industrial workers along with Dalits.
• The movement provided a platform for Dalit-educated youth to use their creativity as a protest activity.
• In the post-emergency period, Dalit Panthers got involved in electoral compromises; it also underwent many splits, which led to its decline. Organizations like the Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF) took over this space.

5. Bhartiya Kisan Union

• Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), an organisation of farmers from western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana regions was one of the leading organisations in the farmers’ movement of the 1980s.
• The BKU demanded higher government floor prices, abolition of restrictions, guaranteed supply of electricity and the provision of a government pension to farmers.

• Activities conducted by the BKU to pressurise the state to accept its demands included rallies, demonstrations, sit-ins, and jail bharo (courting imprisonment) agitations.
• The organisation used traditional caste panchayats of these communities to bring them together over economic issues.
• Until the early years of 1990, the BKU distanced itself from all political parties.
• It operated as a pressure group in politics with its strength of sheer numbers.
• The organisation, along with the other farmers’ organisations across the States, did manage to get some of their economic demands accepted.
• Like BKU other organisations of farmers were Shetkari Sanghatana of Maharashtra and Rayata Sangha of Karnataka.

6. Anti-Arrack Movement

• In the early 1990s, the women of Dubagunta in the Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh had enrolled in the Adult Literacy Drive on a large scale.
• Women in Nellore came together in spontaneous local initiatives to protest against arrack and forced closure of the wine shop.
• The news spread fast and women of about 5000 villages got inspired and met together in meetings, passed resolutions for imposing prohibition and sent them to the District Collector.

• The slogan of the anti-arrack movement was simple prohibition on the sale of arrack.
• But this simple demand touched upon larger social, economic and political issues of the region that affected women’s lives.
• This movement openly discussed the issues of domestic violence like dowry, and sexual violence.

7. Narmada Bachao Andolan

7.1 Sardar Sarovar Project

• This Project was an ambitious Project launched in the Narmada Valley of central India in the early phase of the 1980s.
• The project consisted of 30 big dams, 135 medium-sized and around 3,000 small dams to be constructed on the Narmada and its tributaries that flow across three states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
• The Sardar Sarovar Project is a multipurpose mega-scale dam. Its advocates say that it would benefit huge areas of Gujarat and the three adjoining states in terms of availability of drinking water and water for irrigation, generation of electricity and increase in agricultural production.
• Issues of relocation and proper rehabilitation of the project-affected people were first raised by local activist groups.
• Around 1988-89, the issue crystallised under the banner of the NBA (Narmada Bachao Andolan) a loose collective of local voluntary organisations.

7.2. Debates and struggles

• It demanded that there should be a cost-benefit analysis of the major developmental projects completed in the country so far.
• The movement argued that larger social costs of the developmental projects must be calculated in such an analysis.
• The protest was shifted from its initial demand for rehabilitation to total opposition to the dam.
• A comprehensive National Rehabilitation Policy formed by the government in 2003 can be seen as an achievement of movements like the NBA.

8. Lessons From Popular Movements

• Popular movements help us to understand better the nature of democratic politics.
• These movements came up to rectify some problems in the functioning of party politics and should be seen as an integral part of our democratic politics.
• They represented new social groups whose economic and social grievances were not redressed in the realms of electoral politics.
• These movements ensured effective representation of diverse groups and their demands.
• This reduced the possibility of deep social conflict and disaffection of these groups from democracy.
• Critics of these movements often argue that collective actions like strikes, sit-ins and rallies disrupt the functioning of the government, delay decision making and destabilise the routines of democracy.
• The relationship between popular movements and political parties has grown weaker over the years, creating a vacuum in politics.

9. Movement for Right to Information

• The movement for the Right to Information (RTI) started in 1990, when a mass-based organisation called the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) in Rajasthan took the initiative in demanding records of famine relief work and accounts of labourers.
• In 1994 and 1996, the MKSS organised Jan Sunwais or Public Hearings, where the administration was asked to explain its stand in public.
• In 1996 MKSS formed National Council for People’s Right to Information in Delhi to raise RTI to the status of a national campaign.
• In 2002, a weak Freedom of Information Act was legislated but never came into force. In 2004 RTI Bill was tabled and received presidential assent in June 2005.