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Rise of Popular Movements
The lessons from popular movements in India are explained below :
(i) It helps us to understand better the nature of democratic politics. These movements are not sporadic in nature and do not create any problem. These movements have come up to rectify some problem in the functioning of party politics and are an integral part of our democratic politics.
(ii) These movements represent new social groups whose economic and social grievances were not redressed in the realm of electoral politics. Popular movements ensured effective representation of various diverse groups and their demands.
(iii) Popular movements help us in reducing the possibility of social conflict and dissatisfaction of various groups from democracy.
(iv) These movements suggested new forms of active participation and thus broadened the idea of participation in Indian democracy.
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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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