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Rise of Popular Movements
As a result of ‘green revolution’ in the 1960s, sugar and wheat became main cash crops in the region of western UP and Haryana. However, the cash crop market faced a crisis in mid-eighties due to the begining of the process of liberalisation of Indian economy. Under these circumstances the Bharatiya Kisan Union addressed the following issues to protect the interest of the farmers :
(i) Higher government floor prices for sugarcane and wheat;
(ii) Abolition of restrictions on the inter-state movement of farm produce;
(iii) Guaranteed supply of electricity at reasonable rates;
(iv) Waiving of repayments due on loans to farmers;
(v) The provision of a government pension for farmers.
The BKU operated as a pressure group in politics with its strength of sheer numbers. The organisation did manage to get some of their economic demands accepted. The farmers’ movement became one of the most successful social movements of the eighties in this respect.
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.....nearly all ‘new social movements have emerged as corrective to new maladies–environmental degradation, violation of the status of women, destruction of tribal cultures and the undermining of human rights-none of which are in and by themselves transformative of the social order. They are in that way quite different from revolutionary ideologies of the past. But their weakness lies in their being so heavily fragmented......................a large part of the space occupied by the new social movements seem to be suffering from ..various characteristics which Have prevented them from being relevant to the truly oppressed and the poor in the form of a solid unified movement of the people. They are too fragmented, reactive, ad hocish, providing no comprehensive framework of basic social change. Their being anti-this or that (anti-West, anti-capitalist, anti-development, etc.) does not make them any more coherent, any more relevant to oppressed and peripheralised communities. —Rajni Kothari
(a) What is the difference between new social movements and revolutionary ideologies ?
(b) What according to the author are the limitations of social movements ?
(c) If social movements address specific issues, would you say that they are ‘fragmented’ or that they are more focused ? Give reasons for your answer by giving examples.
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