Is the government missing the point of social movements?

Why is you surname, Azad?” asked the policemen interrogating her. “Why do you speak for Muslims when you are a Hindu? When are you planning your next meeting?”

According to police records, Seema Azad, arrested in February 2010 with husband Vishvijay, was an alleged Maoist and were booked under charges of sedition. Last month, Allahabad High Court granted bail to the couple.

“During my trial I observed continuous attempts by the government not only to fabricate the charges, but the whole environment,” Azad said.

“The court room used to be packed during our trial. The government noticed that people and media were taking huge interest in the case. To break our morale, government sleuths started taking pictures and details of people who used to come for the hearing,” Azad, who is in Delhi for people’s hearing on fabricated cases, said.

Azad and others leading various causes across the country say that in the last decade the government has failed to address social movements. Rather than interacting with them, they say the government chose to crush even their legitimate demands put forth in non-violent manner. But the government has taken note. The number and intensity of social movements in the country have increased and government has been more or less unable to deal with them was flagged by president Pranab Mukherjee in his Independence Day speech.

“‘When authority becomes authoritarian, democracy suffers; but when protest becomes endemic, we are flirting with chaos,“Mukherjee had said.

While Mukherjee acknowledged the ‘authoritarian authority’ of the government, he compared protests with chaos.

This approach of not reaching out to people and calling them trouble makers is not helping the government, says PK Sundaram, research consultant, Coalition for nuclear disarmament and peace, an opponent of Kudankulam nuclear power plant project.

“The government is unleashing violence on everyone, it has no right to say that the protesters are turning violent,”she said.

It is a different matter, says Sundaram, when the protesters demand something illegitimate.

“In that case, the government might have a case to reject the demands or not acknowledge them. Currently, the social movements are just demanding the minimum from the government. They are not asking for any policy change or amendments in the constitution, but just the proper implementation of government policies,” he said.

The spurt of social movements in not because suddenly people have woken up to their rights and have come out on the streets to demand them. The reason, notes Abhay Sahoo, leader, anti- POSCO movement, is that the government and opposition have become ignorant to rising resentment and does not intend to formulate a policy to address them.

“You give me one example in the last decade where you saw the government formulating policies or guidelines to address issues. Protests are bound to turn endemic when year after year you have some indifferent people in the government calling the shots. This not specific to UPA. All the state government have the same attitude towards social movements,’ Sahoo said.

In an Asia Times article , political scientist Pushkar notes that once social movements become an effective way of making claims, they are utilized by democratizers as well as by non-democratic and even anti-democratic groups. In other words, writes Pushkar, popular protests can be categorized as “democracy-enhancing” and “democracy-eroding” in terms of their strategies and objectives.

According to Sahoo, while one cannot reject the presence of movements doing harm to democracy, tribals who do not want to give away their land to corporate houses have no hidden agenda or intent to demolish democratic institutes.

“They are emotionally attached to the land and livelihood. They are not shrewd. They are scared,” he said.

Activists at the people’s hearing have been spearheading their respective movements for almost a decade now. A much younger Lokpal movement caught the imagination of the nation and moved the state. Activists say that Lokpal movement legitimized social movements in India.

“Never before you saw the middle class on streets. It definitely came as hope for other movements in the country,” says anti- nuclear activist Vaishali Patil. “It proved that there is anger and if given a chance, people are willing to express it.”

What about the post split scenario where allegations are flying thick in Anna and Kejriwal camps?

“It reached a peak. Then they lost it. The need was to mobilise all social movements in the country which could work as a pressure group,” said Sahoo.