Full solutions to the NCERT textbook’s own back-of-chapter Questions for Social Movements (Book 2, Chapter 8), in the book’s own wording, followed by every in-text Activity and question the chapter asks along the way.
Q. Imagine a society where there has been no social movement. Discuss. You can also describe how you imagine such a society to be.
Answer: A society with no social movement at all would be one where whatever the state, or those already holding power, decided would simply stand unchallenged, generation after generation. Many of the rights that feel completely ordinary today would not exist in such a society: the eight-hour work-day, equal pay for men and women doing the same work, and workers’ social security and pension were all won through social movements, not granted on their own. In India, universal adult franchise is one of the foremost rights given by the Constitution; but in Britain, voting was once limited to property-owning men, and it took Chartism’s demand for universal male suffrage (1839) and a long struggle before the vote widened in 1918, while the suffragettes’ movement for all adult women’s right to vote was bitterly opposed and violently crushed.
Closer home, without the 19th-century social reform movements and the nationalist movement, sati, the social boycott of reformers who campaigned for widow remarriage and the denial of education to girls might never have been challenged. Without the Dalit movement, the stigma of untouchability would carry no organised challenge at all. Without the Chipko Movement, there would be no organised memory connecting deforestation to the floods and landslides that follow it, and without the tribal and peasant movements, the specific grievances of adivasis and sharecroppers might never have entered public debate or state policy at all.
Such a society would not necessarily be free of grievances; it would simply be one where grievances stayed private, unorganised and unable to change anything. As the chapter’s own conclusion says, social movements arise because individuals and social groups seek to change their conditions, and in doing so they change both themselves and society; a society with none of that collective effort would be a far more static, unequal place than the one we actually live in.
Q. Write short notes on: (a) Women’s Movement (b) Tribal Movements
Answer (a) Women’s Movement: The 19th-century social reform movements first raised issues concerning women, and the early 20th century saw the growth of women’s organisations such as the Women’s India Association (1917), the National Council for Women in India (1925) and the All India Women’s Conference (1926), whose focus widened over time from a limited “women’s welfare” concern to national freedom itself. Women also took part in agrarian struggles alongside men, in movements such as Tebhaga, the Telangana armed struggle, and the Warli tribal revolt against bondage in Maharashtra. After 1947, the movement saw a lull, explained either by activists moving into nation-building or by the trauma of Partition, before its “second phase” from the mid-1970s, which brought new organisational strategies and a focus on issues like violence against women, alongside older concerns of land rights and employment. The chapter stresses that women do not all face the same level or kind of disadvantage, and that both men and women are constrained by dominant gender identities, with the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana named as one effort towards a gender-just society.
Answer (b) Tribal Movements: Tribal movements share some common issues but also significant regional differences. The chapter takes Jharkhand, carved out of south Bihar in 2000, as its main example: the movement had a charismatic leader in Birsa Munda, an adivasi who led a major uprising against the British, and later drew on literate adivasis who researched and wrote about their own history, forming a shared Jharkhandi identity, partly out of common hatred for “dikus” (migrant traders and moneylenders). The movement agitated against land acquisition for irrigation and firing ranges, halted survey and settlement operations, resisted the collection of loans and dues, and boycotted the nationalisation of forest produce. In the North East, post-independence state formation created unease among hill tribes conscious of their distinct identity, and the earlier tendency towards secessionism has been replaced by a search for autonomy within the Indian Constitution’s framework. Across the country, the alienation of tribals from forest lands is the ecological issue binding these movements together, alongside cultural and economic concerns.
Q. In India it is difficult to make a clear distinction between the old and new social movements. Discuss.
Answer: The book itself sets up a clear conceptual distinction: old social movements, such as working-class movements in the capitalist West, sought the reorganisation of power relations and worked within the frame of political parties, as the Indian National Congress led the Indian National Movement. New social movements, by contrast, are not about redistributing power but about quality-of-life issues such as a clean environment, are not organised along class lines alone, and are often international in scope, as with the internet-linked protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle (Box 8.4). Old and new movements now also work together in new alliances such as the World Social Forum.
Yet in India this line blurs constantly. Rajni Kothari explains the 1970s surge of Indian social movements as a reaction to elite capture of the state and the failure of party-based electoral representation to reach the poor, so people joined non-party political formations, movements that are “new” in form but are still fundamentally about power, an “old” concern. The women’s movement includes both urban middle-class feminists and poor peasant women, so it is organised across class rather than strictly by it, yet it also campaigns on very material issues like land rights and employment, not just identity. Tribal movements like the Jharkhand movement combine identity and cultural consciousness (a “new” movement feature) with an “old” demand for land and resources and, eventually, formal political power in the form of a separate state. Similarly, the Chipko Movement combined the “old” economic issue of subsistence livelihood with the “new” ecological concern for forest conservation. Because Indian social movements this consistently combine class, identity, ecology and demands on the state within the same movement, the old/new distinction works better as two ends of a spectrum than as two separate boxes a real Indian movement neatly falls into.
Q. Environmental movements often also contain economic and identity issues. Discuss.
Answer: The chapter’s own example, the Chipko Movement, makes this point directly. Villagers hugged trees in the Himalayan foothills to stop government contractors from felling oak and rhododendron forests, and the book describes this as combining a “red” (economic) issue with a “green” (ecological) one: villagers’ subsistence economy, dependent on the forest for firewood, fodder and daily necessities, stood against the government’s profit economy, which wanted to sell timber. At the same time, cutting the natural forests had resulted in devastating floods and landslides in the region. The 1970 Alaknanda valley flood, which the book says an unusually heavy monsoon precipitated, was the turning-point at which villagers began to perceive the links between deforestation, landslides and floods, giving the movement an ecological motivation that was inseparable from the economic one.
Chipko also carried an identity and political dimension: it expressed hill villagers’ resentment of a distant plains-based government seen as indifferent and hostile to their concerns, a regional identity issue distinct from both the economic and ecological threads. Tribal movements show the same pattern: the book says the alienation of tribals from forest lands is an ecological issue central to tribal movements, but it exists “just as” cultural issues of identity and economic issues such as inequality do, in the very same movements. This is why the chapter treats ecological movements as a good illustration of how new social movements are not organised along a single axis: questions of social inequality can occur alongside other, equally important issues, such as ecology and identity, within one movement.
Q. Distinguish between peasant and New Farmer’s movements.
Answer:
| Peasant movements | New Farmers’ Movements |
|---|---|
| Trace back to pre-colonial days; the 1858-1914 period tended to be localised, disjointed and confined to particular grievances (e.g. the Bengal revolt of 1859-62, the “Deccan riots” of 1875 against moneylenders) | Began in the 1970s, in Punjab and Tamil Nadu |
| Involved “peasants”, often tied to land revenue, indigo cultivation or feudal/landlord conditions (Champaran, Bardoli, Tebhaga, Telangana) | Involved “farmers” (people who are both commodity producers and purchasers, market-involved on both sides) |
| Many were organised through, or linked with, the freedom movement and organisations like the Kisan Sabhas and the Communist Party of India | Regionally organised and explicitly non-party, with a strongly anti-state and anti-urban ideology |
| Demands centred on land, rent, debt and freedom from economic exploitation for peasants and workers | Demands centred on “price and related issues”: procurement prices, remunerative prices, input prices, taxation and non-repayment of loans |
| Methods included satyagraha-style non-cooperation, refusal to pay revenue, and, in Naxalbari’s case, armed insurgency | Used novel methods such as blocking roads and railways, and refusing politicians and bureaucrats entry into villages |
| Central to the “old” social movement pattern: reorganising power over land and revenue | Later broadened to include environment and women’s issues too, so can be seen as part of the worldwide “new social movements” |
In-text Activities and Questions (asked within the chapter)
The chapter also asks questions inside the text: five Activity boxes, a question after the list of public issues, and a discussion question in Box 8.8. They are given here in the order the book prints them, with model answers. Where an activity asks you to compare, find out or collect, the answer shows what a good response should contain; use it alongside your own findings.
Q. Compare your life with your grandmother. How is it different from yours? What are the rights you take for granted in your life and which she did not have? Discuss.
Answer: Many grandmothers grew up without rights that students today take for granted: the right to go to school and study as far as they wish, to choose or refuse a marriage partner and not be married as a child, to work outside the home and be paid equally for the same work, to own and inherit property, to vote and stand for election, and protection by law against dowry and violence. Some of these rights were won only after independence (universal adult franchise came with the Constitution), and many through the struggles the chapter describes, from 19th-century social reform to the women’s movement’s campaigns on dowry, sexual harassment and land rights. The chapter’s point is that we often assume the rights we enjoy just happened to exist, when in fact they were won by social movements.
Q. Try and think of any example that will show you how society is changed by social movements and also how a social movement can lead to other social movements.
Answer: The chapter’s own example: the Indian national movement shaped the making of the Indian Constitution, and the Constitution in turn played a major role in bringing about social change. Another example: the 19th-century social reform movements against sati and for widow remarriage and girls’ education changed society, and fed into the early women’s organisations (WIA 1917, AIWC 1926) and later the women’s movement. Similarly, the anti-caste movement that began under Jotiba Phule was carried forward by the non-Brahmin movements and then developed under Dr. Ambedkar (Box 8.7).
Q. Think of other issues that social movements have taken up in the past and present.
Answer: Besides the chapter’s examples (the right of tribal people to use forests, and the right of displaced people to settlement and compensation), social movements have taken up: abolition of sati and untouchability, widow remarriage and girls’ education, workers’ wages and hours, peasants’ land and share of produce (Tebhaga), protection of forests and the environment (Chipko), the right to information, separate statehood (Jharkhand), dowry and violence against women, and remunerative prices for farmers.
Q. Make a list of different social movements that you have heard or read of. What changes do they want to bring about? What changes do they want to prevent?
Answer: A good list, with changes sought and changes resisted:
- Chipko Movement: sought protection of forests and villagers’ subsistence; wanted to prevent commercial felling of trees.
- Dalit movement: seeks equality, self-dignity and eradication of untouchability; wants to prevent caste discrimination and humiliation.
- Women’s movement: seeks equal rights, land rights and employment; wants to prevent dowry, sexual harassment and violence against women.
- New farmers’ movements: seek remunerative prices and lower input costs; want to prevent loss of income from low procurement prices.
- Jharkhand movement: sought a separate state; resisted land acquisition and nationalisation of forest produce.
- Counter movements (such as the Dharma Sabha) show the opposite pattern: they want to prevent change and defend the status quo.
Q. Find out some instances of environmental pollution from your region. Discuss. You can also have a poster exhibition of all your findings.
Answer: Record instances from your own area, for example: smoke and dust from vehicles, factories or brick kilns; burning of crop stubble or garbage; untreated sewage and industrial waste in a river, pond or lake; plastic waste and open dumping; noise pollution; and cutting of trees. For each, note the cause, who is affected and what is being done. Link them to the chapter: a development model that uses natural resources without check, industrial pollution, and state programmes the chapter names such as Namami Gange and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Posters can show a photo or drawing, the cause, the effect and a suggested remedy.
Q. Follow the news regularly and collect information on the issues that trade unions are taking up. Discuss in the context of globalisation.
Answer: Typical issues in the news are: wages and dearness allowance, job security and the spread of contract and casual work, closure of units and retrenchment, privatisation and disinvestment, changes in labour laws, social security and pensions, working hours and safety, and the rights of gig and informal workers. In the context of globalisation, firms are often transnational and face international competition, so they seek flexible, cheaper labour; unions resist this through strikes and campaigns. The chapter also notes that old and new social movements now work together in new alliances such as the World Social Forum, which raises awareness about the hazards of globalisation.
Q. In 2019, the Government of India introduced 10 per cent reservation in education and government jobs for economically weaker sections among upper castes. How is it different from the above quote? Discuss.
Answer: G.B. Pant’s quote asks for particular care of the Depressed Classes, the Scheduled Castes and the Backward Classes, groups identified by social and caste-based disadvantage, so that the weakest links of the chain are strengthened. The 2019 reservation is based on economic criteria alone and is meant for economically weaker sections among the upper castes, groups identified by economic rather than caste-based criteria. So the basis differs (economic disadvantage versus social and caste-based backwardness), and the beneficiaries differ. What they share is the idea in Pant’s metaphor that a healthy body politic needs every weak section, including the economically weak, to be brought up to the general level.