International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438
New Social Movements in India: An Aspect of
Environmental Movements
Dr. Bina Rai
Assistant Professor (Political Science), R.G. (P.G.) College, Meerut
Abstract: The Indian Constitution itself contains provisions for environmental protection. The Directive Principles of State Policy
acknowledge the States responsibility with regard to environmental protection has laid down under Article 48-A of our Constitution that
The State shall endeavor to protect and improve the environment and to safeguard the forests and wildlife of the country. India faces
problems of environmental degradation and lack of governance on matters related to these.The new social movements in the Third
World show a rare sensitivity to the heterogeneity of the sources and structures of exploitation and oppression. The new social
movements can be seen as vehicles of cumulative change in the social, economic and political fields. The role of these people's
movements and experiments transcends not only state power, but also the new existing civil societies.
Keywords: Democracy, Ecofeminism, Environment, Indian Constitution, Social Movements,
1. Introduction
in sustained interactions with elites, opponents and
authorities.
Democracy is largely understood as popular sovereignty
where people have control over the decision made by the
state. Since it is not practically possible for the people in the
modern democratic societies to participate in the decision
making process of the state directly, they do so through
representatives.
But when political parties become
ineffective in representing the interest of the people, we see
the emergence of social movements (SMs).It is a truism that
no society is static. Space, processes and nature as well as
the direction of social change vary from time to time and
society to society. Social movements are nothing new and
they are taking place all around the globe, whether, they are
based on certain issues or interests, under different
institutional environments. In India also social movements
have taken place around identity issues or interest based
activism. Social movements play an important role in
escalating not only the processes of change, but also in
giving direction to social transformation. Till the 1960s,
sociologists interest in social movements was largely
focused on sanskritisation and socio-religious reform
movements, excluding the political dimension as beyond
their scope. It issometimes argued that the freedom of
expression, education and relative economic independence
prevalent in the modern Western culture are responsible for
the unprecedented number and scope of various
contemporary social movements. However, others point out
that many of the social movements of the last hundred years
grew up, like the Mau Mau in Kenya, to oppose Western
colonialism. Either way, social movements have been and
continued to be closely connected with democratic political
systems. Occasionally, social movements have been
involved in democratizing nations, but more often they have
flourished after democratization.
Charles Tilly defines social movements as a series of
contentious performances, displays and campaigns by which
ordinary people make collective claims on others.
Sidney Tarrow defines a social movement as collective
challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity
Paper ID: SUB158569
It is important to note, however, that such tendencies and
trends, and the influence of the unconscious or irrational
factors in human behavior, may be of crucial importance in
illuminating the problems of interpreting and explaining
social movement. Objectives, ideology, programmes,
leadership, and organization are important components of
social movements. They are interdependent, influencing
each other. These social movements then bring about change
in the social, economic and political environment and
thereby, become a social force themselves.
M.S.A. Rao defined social movement as a sustained
collective mobilization through either informal or formal
organization or which is generally oriented towards bringing
about change. Social movements involves:
a) Collective mass mobilization
b) Collective mass support
c) Formal or informal organization
d) A conscious commitment towards its aims and beliefs
e) Deliberative collective action towards change
2. Types of Social Movements
David Bayley (1962) divides coercive public protest into
legal and illegal protests. Each category is further subdivided into violent and non-violent protests. Some others
classify movements into grassroots and macro movements.
Social movements are also classified on the basis of issues
around which participants get mobilized. Some of them are
known as the forest, civil rights, anti-untouchability,
linguistic, and nationalist and other such movements.
Some others classify movements on the basis of the
participants, such as peasants, tribal, students, women,
Dalits, etc. In many cases the participants and issues go
together. Social movements into the following types on the
basis of the socioeconomic characteristics of the participants
and the issues involved:
1) Peasant movements
2) Dalit movements
3) Backward caste movements
Volume 4 Issue 9, September 2015
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1918
International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438
4) Womens movements
5) Industrial working class movements
6) Students movements; and
7) Middle class movements
Now we add two more typehuman rights and
environmental movements. These movements are based
around certain issues and their theorizations claim to cover
all social and economic groups. Though the leadership of
these movements in the contemporary times comes from the
middle class, they primarily raise the issues affecting the
deprived classes and communities.
3. Environmental Movements in India
The United Nations, conference on Human Environment,
Stockholm, 1972 paved the way for a number of studies and
reports on the condition of the environment and its effect on
the present and future generations. It expressed concern to
protect and improve the environment for present and future
generations. The development of green polities or ecogreens or the green movement in Germany and NorthAmerica in the early 1980s boosted the formation of the
green network and the green movement throughout the
world, including India. A number of action groups, research
institutes, and documentation centers have been established
to study and mobilize public opinion on environmental
issues (Spretnak and Capra 1985). By now the material on
the environmental situation in general and in certain sectors
such as air, land, forest, water, marine resources, etc. has
proliferated in different forms from popular literature to
scientific studies. Environment provide valuable material
not only on various aspects of the environment but also
peoples resistance and struggles. There are large areas of
forests which are inhabited by rare species of animal life.
The country is also having many rivers which provides
livelihood for a considerable number of people including the
Adivasi .However these natural resources were a favorite
prey for the vested interests in the state. They exploited the
nature without any social concerns. This resulted in larger
issues of development and displacement. With the
endangered nature the dependent population also faces many
threats. Many of these threatened communities were also
marginalized groups including the poor and Adivasi. Their
inability to fight against the mighty interests also accelerated
the environmental exploitation and degradation.
The environmental movements in India were of special
significance in the history of new social movements in India.
These movements can be classified as new social
movements because of their following characteristics;
1) The movements were addressing novel issues like
environmental degradation
2) The movements were massive with the active
participation of marginalized groups
3) The demands of the new movements were novel in the
sense that it demanded right to livelihood and rights of
displaced
4) The environmental movements adapted non-violent
strategy
5) The movements incorporated hitherto unrepresented
sectors of society including adivasies, women and the
marginalized.
Paper ID: SUB158569
6) Many of the new environmental movements forced the
governments to take affirmative policies in the form of
new laws and provisions.
The post-independence era has witnessed environmental
degradation on an unprecedented scale. Soil erosion, air and
water pollution, rapid depletion or forest cover and wild life
are just some of the effects of environment degradation. IIIconceived plans of urbanization and industrialization have
only led to further ecological crisis. As has been pointed out
by eminent scholars that development results in destruction
of eco-friendly, labor intensive traditional means of
production; pollution of the environment and depletion of
bio mass; and a result of the above two, deprivation of the
ecosystem results in the loss of the sources of livelihood of
the people. The most tragic industrial accident has been the
poising caused by the leakage of MIC gas in Bhopal
(Madhya Pradesh). In mid night of December 2-3, 1984 a
catastrophe unfolded itself in the city of Bhopal, when a
deadly lethal gas floated over the city causing causalities to
thousands of humans and animals and creating unbearable
sufferings for those who survived as they developed genetic
defects because of MIC gas causing blindness, kidney and
liver failure and a variety of chronic diseases. The people of
Bhopal still continue to be a vulnerable population as 390
metric tons of poisonous waste lay around the factory area
for 25 years awaiting courts decision. Justice has been
denied to the victims of tragedy as main culprit Warren
Anderson is absconding, and there are no chance of his
extradition to India.
Other environmental hazards can be seen as being caused by
heavy environmental pollution caused by thermal plants, the
main effluent being flying ash, as in case of Kolaghat, West
Bengal. Sewerage system, betel cultivation and floriculture
have been worst hit by such fly ash.
Ecological movements have erupted wherever there have
been threats to forests and agriculture lands by inundation,
water logging, salinity resulting from the construction of
large dams and massive projects like the Tehri Dam,
KoelKaro, Sirsi and Inchampalli. Sometimes environmental
movements may spring from the urge of the forest dwelling
communities to save forest from destruction like the Chipko
movement and similar movements in Western Ghats, the
Aravallis and also the Vindhyas, and also in the tribal belts
of India. As Vandana Shiva points out that in India,
ecological movements can be seen to have certain
commonness although they may differ in their methods and
their protest agenda. The commonness can be said to be in
term of:
Economic conflict between two types of economic activityone aiming at securing survival for the people in a
sustainable manner through a genuinely collective
management and the other aiming at maximizing the growth
rate even at the cost of bare survival of many.Technological
conflict arising out of the choice between two types of
technologies, one indigenous which is labor- intensive and
other western capital-intensive. The former causes lesser
ecological hazards and the other annihilation of ecological
pattern of a particular area.
Volume 4 Issue 9, September 2015
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1919
International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438
Ecological movements therefore, focus their concern
regarding the use of resource-hungry of modern technology
and accompanying high ecological and social costs. Many of
the movements in India have been and continue to be
political movements grappling with ongoing or potential loss
of control over natural resources. Their concerns derive from
State policies that claim to be founded on the notion of
economic development but which often end up seriously
impairing the habitats, livelihoods of communities and
obstructing their access to natural resources.
Chipko Movement:
This renowned movement began in 1971 in the hills of
Uttrakhand drew upon the Bishnois action in Rajasthan
nearly 265 years ago. Chipko Movement means hug-the-tree
movement. The Chipko Movements first action started in
March 1974 in Reni village in the Garhwal Himalayas, when
a group of village of women led by Gauri Devi hugged the
trees and prevented the hired sawyers to cut them down for a
sports goods company. The movement spread rapidly
throughout the valley. Women, being most affected by the
hardship of both the ongoing degradation to their
environment and the privatization of basic resources, played
a prominent and decisive role. When attempts were made to
divert the attention of the men, the women stepped into save
their environment and their livelihoods. This simple action
translated into an organized and peaceful movement under
the leadership of Chandi Prasad Bhatt. The movement
largely drew upon Gandhian principles of non-violent and
Satyagrah. This was the first movement of its kind, not just
in post-independent India, but also across the world. It is
regarded as one of the hallmarks in the history of the
environmental movement.
As the movement gained steam the government finally
yielded and the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, declared a
ban on tree logging in the 5000-kilometer Trans Himalayan
region. A United Nations Environment Program feature
lauded the efforts of the participants: the Chipko people are
working for a socio-economic revolution by wining control
of their forest resources from the hands of a distant
bureaucracy which is concerned with selling the forest for
making urban-oriented products. It also sensitized civil
society in India to the need to pressure the government to
formulate an ecological policy that would promote
sustainable development.
Anti-Dam Movements:
Prime Minister JawaharLal Nehru referred to dams as the
temple of modern India. After independence, the
government sanctioned several large-scale dam projects with
the aim of making drinking water available to all and
making India self-sufficient in food production. India is
among what are called big dam countries, third only to
China and the United States. Though these large dam
projects have met with some success in providing food
security to India, it has been argued they have come at a
huge social and environmental cost. Roots of opposition to
dam projects can be traced to the governments failure to
rehabilitate displaced victims and to concern about
ecological sustainability.
Paper ID: SUB158569
Anti Tehri Dam Movement:
In 1972, the Indian Planning Commission approved plans
for Tehri Dam, naming the principal town it would
submerge, along with two populated and fertile valleys.
Protest against the project began in 1967 and continued for
more than two decades. The peoples committee formed to
oppose the dam succeeded in forcing the government to
make several reviews of the project. In the mid -1980s the
plan was abandoned for some time after the committee
appointed by the government to review the project
recommended ending it on environmental grounds. By 1992,
when construction of the dam was well under way, the
opposition movement peaked, and it seemed for some time
that the protestors might persuade the government to again
halt the project. The movement swelled, and environmental
activists, concerned citizens, and others joined the residents
of Tehri, neighboring villages, and the adjoining area of
Uttarakhand in urging the end of what they viewed as a
destructive, costly and unnecessary dam. Ultimately the
movement was not successful and the authorities pressed on
with Tehri Dam, finally submerging most of Tehri and the
proposed valleys in 2005.
Narmada BachaoAandolan (NBA):
The other movement has been against the construction of
Mega dams. Indias planned economic development failed to
take into consideration the displacement of huge number of
people from the land where they have been living for
generations. NBA is an ongoing movement to save the river
valleys of the Narmada River in central India. It has
mobilized people at the grass roots level on a scale
unprecedented for an environmental movements in postindependent India. The movement is primarily against the
construction of the SardarSarovar Dam which is estimated to
displace 300,000 people largely peasants and tribal peopleand inundate farming land and forest area which is inhabited
by rare species. The NBA and its supporters argue that the
projected benefits, given past experience, are unlikely to be
realized and are far outweighed by the social and
environmental costs. The NBA is believed to get media
visibility and catch international attention and NBA has
succeeded in provoking a larger public debate on
development and the environment within India. It has
initiated discussion about which model of development is
appropriate for India. NBA argues for the latter, nothing the
idea of precaution in environmental matters, as well as the
social, cultural, and economic rights of the displaced. It
encourages the adoption of traditional water harvesting
systems in villages and improving dry farming techniques,
which all also promote social and ecological harmony. As a
last resort, NBA also advices improvement of the efficiency
of existing dam projects.
MedhaPatkar, a central organizer of NBA, states that the
model of development symbolized by projects like the
SardarSarovar Dam represent the epitome of unsustainable
development, and there is no other way but to redefine
modernity and the goals of development, to widen it to a
sustainable, just between human beings and between people
and nature. The movement has drawn attention to the
conflicts between environment and development at a popular
level. By demanding that affected people be given voice, the
NBA was instrumental in the World Banks decision to
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1920
International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438
withdraw its funding and participation from the project on
the basis of human and environmental concerns. The
Supreme Court of India ruled on the NBAs litigation
against construction of the dam in 2000, judging that the
project could go forward as long as resettlement and
rehabilitation of displaced people was appropriate and
effectively carried out. The judgement, while recognizing
the economic and housing rights of the valleys inhabitants
to be fundamental, did not evaluate the environmental
aspects of human rights.
The Silent Valley Project
Another significant anti-dam movement is against the Kerla
Governments proposal to construct a dam across the river
Kunthi in the Silent Valley. The government has argued that
it is a viable alternative to the more expensive and polluting
sources of thermal power. However, environmental and
citizen groups oppose it due to a threat that it may upset the
delicate ecological balance of the bio-diversity reserve
inhabited by some rare species in the Silent Valley.
International organization such as the World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF) and International Union for the conservation
of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) mounted pressure
on the government, leading to the shelving of the project in
1983 by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. This movement met
with success fairly early and is one of the very rare instances
where the State yielded to pressure and retacted.
4. Conclusion
The success stories have been rather unique in their initial
conditions and not easily generalize. And, to get back to the
conservative
bias
of
Indian
environmentalism,
Environmental advocacy is wary of movements, such as the
Gonds of Adilabad, where the struggles for rights are acutely
destabilizing, even while a less threatening peasant
movement like Chipko is celebrated.
Interdisciplinary Water Resources Studies (2nd July,
2002)
[2] GauriGadgil, RamchandraGuha: The Trouble with
Radical Environmentalists, Infochange Makers, at
http://www. Infochangingindia.org/changemakers.
[3] Gopa Joshi, The Chipko Movement and Women,
PUCL Bulletin, September 1982.
[4] International Institute for Sustainable Development,
Chipko Movement, India at http://www.iisd.org
[5] Krishnakumar, R, Threat to a Valleys Silence,
Frontline, Vol. 21 Issue XIII (19th June-2nd July, 2004)
[6] Phillipe Cullet, SardarSarovar Judgement and Human
Rights, Economic and Political Weekly, (5th-11th May
2001)
[7] Poonam, Kanwal, Environmental Conflicts, Protests
and Movements in India: Question of Survival and
Democracy
[8] Shiv Visvanthan, A Celebration of Difference: Science
and Democracy in Modern India, Science Magazine,
Vol. 28, Issue 5360 (3rd April 1998).
[9] Shiva, Vandana, Ecology Movements in India, in
Oomen, T. K.(Ed.), Social Movements: Issues of
Identity, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, New Delhi,
2011
[10] Shekhar Pathak, Tehri Dam : Submersion of a Town,
Not of an Idea, Economic and Political Weekly (13 th
August 2005)
[11] Singh
M.
P.,
and
SexnaRekha,
Indian
Politics:Contemporary Issues and Concerns Prentice
Hall of India, Pvt. Ltd, 2008
[12] Ranjeet Dev Raj, World Awaits Courts Decision on
Narmada Dam Asia Times (16th March,2000)
[13] Whose Environment is it? Problems of Poverty and
Development in India South Asian Voice, (January,
2000).
Ecofeminism in the West, rooted in the analogy of womens
and natures biological, procreative, and maternal role, is
echoed in Indian concepts of Purush/Prakriti and Shakti.The
problems of development and environment in India are
extremely complex. It is important to note that people at all
levels of society-government, NGOs, scientists, and citizens
often disagree about the best way to use resources in the
most efficient, environmentally friendly, and equitable way.
Therefore, it is crucial that any environmental movement
that seeks to be a peoples movement, and aims to become
lasting and relevant, must sympathize with the concerns of
all of Indias poor and disadvantaged. There is no doubt that
these movements have yet to play important roles in the
preservation of both social and environmental rights within
India, but such movements must fully recognize and value
the right to development, in tandem with the right to a
functional and healthy environment, if they are to meet with
success on the public and political levels.
References
[1] Bandhopadhyay J, Malik B., Mandal M., and Perveen S,
Report on a Policy Dialogue on Dams and
Development,
South
Asian
Consortium
for
Paper ID: SUB158569
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