Social Movements in Independent India : A Comparative History of Inequality and Resistance

This book examines the social movement landscape in Independent India by conducting a comparative study of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA - Save the Narmada Movement) and the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS - Anti-POSCO Campaign Committee). It explores their modes of political articulation and the forms of democratic participation that they have cultivated. The book addresses a gap in comparative studies of social movements, and employs a qualitatively different approach by situating the analysis in two periods, one a few decades after Indian Independence in 1947 and the other during economic liberalisation, which accelerated in the 1990s.

Meena Menon employs an ethnographic approach, drawing on over 180 interviews that provide a granular insight into the structure, functioning and decision-making in the two social movements. Menon also considers the class and caste configurations of the leadership and the implications of these configurations.

Social Movements in Independent India demonstrates the importance of institutional engagement by social movements and uncovers a disaggregated picture of the state and its arbitrary and punitive character in criminalising dissent. It exposes the textures of inequality that permeate movements of this kind, as well as addressing patronage and its role in the deification of the leadership, as in the case of the NBA leader, Medha Patkar. The book contributes to an enhanced understanding of the importance of social and cultural capital, which the movement leadership possessed in good measure, in contrast to the status of the project-affected who existed as subjects, not citizens. Significantly, it provides a commentary on citizenship, the precarity of resistance and the challenges to movements in contemporary India.