What social conditions cause a social movement? Explain with illustrations, the career of a social movement. (2001)
Discontent is universal; movements are not. The sociological question is therefore which social conditions convert grievance into sustained collective action, and what career — the sequence of stages — that action then follows. M. S. A. Rao answers the first with three factors; Herbert Blumer‘s natural history answers the second.
Social conditions that cause movements
- Relative deprivation. Rao, following W. G. Runciman and Ted Robert Gurr, locates the cause not in absolute misery but in the gap between expectation and attainment, measured against a reference group. James C. Davies added that revolt is likeliest when a period of improvement is abruptly reversed.
- Structural strain. Where the prevailing normative order can no longer accommodate new aspirations, Neil Smelser (Theory of Collective Behavior, 1962) sees strain generating a generalised belief about the cause of the trouble.
- The urge for revitalisation. Rao’s third factor: movements do not merely protest, they offer an alternative moral order.
- Consciousness. Ghanshyam Shah stresses that deprivation must be interpreted as unjust and remediable — Doug McAdam‘s cognitive liberation.
- Structural conduciveness and political opportunity. Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow emphasise openings in the polity, elite divisions and the limits of repression. Democratisation, universal franchise, mass education, urbanisation and cheap communication have all widened this space in India.
- Persisting inequality within a formally equal order. The Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi, founded in 1994 by Manda Krishna Madiga, arose precisely from deprivation within a reserved category — the perception that a few Scheduled Castes captured most of the quota. Its demand was vindicated on 1 August 2024, when a seven-judge Supreme Court bench upheld sub-classification of Scheduled Castes.
The career of a social movement
Blumer distinguishes four stages, to which the natural-history literature adds a fifth. The Telangana statehood movement illustrates the whole arc.
- Social unrest. Diffuse discontent without direction. Telangana’s grievances over jobs, water and investment surfaced in the “Jai Telangana” agitation of 1969 and then subsided.
- Popular excitement. Grievance is named, a cause is identified and agitation spreads. Through the 1990s regional deprivation acquired a shared vocabulary.
- Formalisation. Leadership, ideology and organisation crystallise; funds, strategy and a division of labour appear. The Telangana Rashtra Samithi, founded in 2001 under K. Chandrashekar Rao, gave the sentiment a permanent vehicle, with a fast in 2009 forcing the Centre’s hand.
- Institutionalisation. Goals are conceded and absorbed into the system. The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act created Telangana on 2 June 2014, and the movement’s organisation became the governing party.
- Dissolution or transformation. Renamed the Bharat Rashtra Samithi in 2022, it lost office in December 2023 — an ordinary party judged on governance, not a movement.
Limits of a stage model
Careers are not uniform. Armand L. Mauss notes that success itself causes fragmentation, and many movements never reach institutionalisation. T. K. Oommen warns against treating stages as inevitable rather than contingent on state response.
Conclusion
Deprivation supplies the motive, strain the occasion, consciousness and opportunity the possibility; organisation then decides how far the career runs. Telangana shows a movement completing the full cycle — and being consumed by its own victory.