“What role can the power of unorganised masses play in bringing about social change in a democratic society?” (1991)
Unorganised masses are people who lack durable associations such as unions, parties or movement organisations: the informal poor, scattered voters, spontaneous crowds. India’s e-Shram portal alone had registered nearly 32 crore unorganised workers by August 2026. Classical theory doubted that such masses could produce progressive change. Democratic experience shows that their power is real, but it works through particular channels and has clear limits.
The sceptical view
- Gustave Le Bon (The Crowd, 1895) saw crowds as irrational and suggestible.
- William Kornhauser (The Politics of Mass Society, 1959) argued that atomised masses without intermediate groups are available for manipulation by elites and demagogues.
- Robert Michels and Mancur Olson add two problems: masses need organisation to act, organisation breeds oligarchy, and unorganised individuals face the free-rider problem.
Channels through which mass power produces change
- The vote. Universal franchise turns scattered numbers into power without formal organisation.
- The 1977 elections after the Emergency removed the ruling party.
- Yogendra Yadav‘s “second democratic upsurge” of the 1990s brought lower castes, rural and poor voters to the fore. Christophe Jaffrelot calls it a Silent Revolution (2003).
- In 2024, women’s turnout (65.78%) matched the overall figure (65.79%, Election Commission), pushing parties towards women-centred welfare.
- Disruption. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward (Poor People’s Movements, 1977) argue that the poor win most through mass defiance, and that formal organisation often tames that disruptive power.
- Moral outrage. E. P. Thompson showed that the eighteenth-century crowd acted on a “moral economy”, not blind frenzy. After the Nirbhaya case (December 2012), spontaneous protests produced the Justice J. S. Verma Committee and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013.
- Everyday resistance. James C. Scott (Weapons of the Weak, 1985) and Asef Bayat‘s “quiet encroachment” (Life as Politics, 2010) describe change through countless uncoordinated acts. Street vendors’ persistent occupation of pavements helped bring about the Street Vendors Act, 2014.
- Political society. Partha Chatterjee (The Politics of the Governed, 2004) shows slum-dwellers and squatters negotiating with the state through collective claims outside formal civil society.
- Digital swarms. Connective action lets unorganised people converge quickly, as in Kolkata’s “Reclaim the Night” marches (2024).
Limits
- Episodic gains fade or are reversed without organisation to follow them through.
- Manipulation and majoritarianism. Kornhauser’s fear is borne out in mob lynchings and populist mobilisation against minorities.
- Elite capture. Leaders and parties often appropriate mass energy.
- B. R. Ambedkar warned in November 1949 that once constitutional methods exist, unconstitutional agitation becomes the “grammar of anarchy”.
- Change usually lasts only when mass energy is converted into organisation. The Nirbhaya protests fed an existing women’s movement, and the vendors’ pressure worked through vendor federations.
Conclusion
In a democracy, unorganised masses are a latent veto and a source of new agendas. They exercise power through the ballot, disruption, outrage and everyday encroachment. Piven and Cloward are right that their power lies in numbers and defiance. Michels is right that lasting change needs institutions. Social change comes when mass pressure meets democratic institutions and organisation.