Describe the factors related to social movements. In the light of these factors explain the emergence of peasant movements in India. (1997)
A social movement is sustained collective action, with some organisation and a shared ideology, directed at bringing about or resisting social change. Sociology explains its emergence not by grievance alone — grievance is near-constant — but by a combination of strain, perception, resources, opportunity and meaning. Indian peasant movements follow exactly this combination.
The factors sociology identifies
- Structural strain. Neil Smelser (Theory of Collective Behavior, 1962) argued that conduciveness and strain must coincide with a generalised belief before mobilisation occurs.
- Relative deprivation. Ted Gurr located the trigger in the gap between expectation and attainment, not absolute want. M. S. A. Rao added the Indian qualification: deprivation mobilises only when the sufferer believes something can be done. Ghanshyam Shah and T. K. Oommen object that deprivation alone explains too little, ignoring ideology and the sources of deprivation.
- Resources and organisation. John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald hold that grievances are constant while money, networks and leadership vary — so mobilisation, not discontent, is what must be explained.
- Political opportunity and repertoire. Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow point to elite divisions, allies and the state’s repressive capacity, and to the historically available repertoires of contention.
- Ideology, framing and leadership. A grievance must be named, its cause assigned and a remedy proposed; movements also need leaders, often from outside the aggrieved group itself.
These factors in Indian peasant movements
- Strain. Colonial land settlements — the Permanent Settlement of 1793, ryotwari, mahalwari — turned custom into contract and revenue into a cash demand, creating the zamindar, the moneylender and the indebted cultivator. This strain underlies the Indigo Revolt (1859–60), Pabna (1873) and the Deccan Riots (1875).
- Precipitating crisis. The Bengal famine of 1943 and wartime hoarding preceded Tebhaga (1946–47); revenue enhancement triggered Bardoli (1928).
- Relative deprivation. The Green Revolution raised incomes and expectations together; the new farmers’ movements from the late 1970s were launched by the prospering, not the poorest — Sharad Joshi’s Bharat versus India is a deprivation claim made by surplus producers.
- Resources. The Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha and the All India Kisan Sabha (1936, first president Swami Sahajanand Saraswati) supplied organisation; in 2020–21 the Samyukta Kisan Morcha drew on village union networks, the gurdwara langar system and diaspora funds to hold Delhi’s borders for a year.
- Political opportunity. The national movement, the provincial ministries of 1937 and the Nizam’s refusal to accede opened space — Telangana (1946–51) is unintelligible without it.
- Ideology and idiom. Religious idiom in the Moplah risings, Gandhian satyagraha in Champaran and Kheda, class language in Tebhaga and Naxalbari. Ranajit Guha insists this idiom is the peasant’s own consciousness, not a borrowed shell; James C. Scott’s moral economy explains why violated customary entitlement, more than poverty itself, sparks revolt.
Conclusion
No single factor suffices. Indian peasant movements arose where colonial or market-induced strain met an organisation capable of converting resentment into demand and a political moment that made the demand sayable. The formula still holds: the 2020–21 mobilisation combined distress — 50.2 per cent of agricultural households indebted in the NSS survey of 2019 — with dense organisation and an electoral opening, and forced repeal of the three farm laws.