Struggling for Justice, Protesting the State

Sailen Routray

 

The state in India seems to be besieged with protests from all sides. Groups of traditional fisher-folk agitate against commercial/industrial fishing, and fight for their rights over the seas. Farmers in fertile coastal tracts increasingly protest against possible displacement by proposed industrial development. The urban middle classes march against corruption. Indian seems to have turned into a republic of protests.

In this conjuncture the volume under review is a timely intervention. For looking at protests in India, Struggles against the state by Ashok Swain takes the literature surrounding social movements as its point of departure. It identifies resource mobilization theory originating primarily in the US, and the new social movement literature originating in Europe, as the two relevant dominant frameworks for itself. 

Swain argues against simplistic extensions of these frameworks to understand protests in the postcolonial context. He locates peoples’ protests against the state in India at the sites of friction between democracy and anti-people development policies of the state.

The book studies two states in India, Kerala in the South and Odisha in the East to probe the linkages between social networks and protest movements. It is based on a multi-state study of involvements of people in protest movements and civic associations. It argues that the presence and salience of class-based left-wing politics and organizations (for example, in the state of West Bengal) is not a sufficient condition for people's participation in protests. 

Based on survey data and a brief overview of Kerala’s history, Swain argues that it is in the history and dynamics of Kerala’s rich and diverse associational life and social networks that the key to the rich tradition of protest movements in the state is to be found.

He compares Kerala with Odisha and finds that the rates of participation in protests in the latter state are low. Within Odisha he adds an intra-state dimension by comparing coastal and inland regions. He finds such participation higher in the coastal region. He argues that this difference can be explained by the nature and degree of associational life in these two regions. 

Swain also finds an increasing trend of participation in protests against the state between the years 1997 and 2007 across these two regions in Odisha. He explains this as the result of increasing activities by Maoists and Christian missionaries.

The book depends almost exclusively on survey based data and analysis of secondary literature. This methodological orientation is not always completely adequate to deal with the questions at hand. For example, although the increasing importance of Maoists and missionaries in Odisha is shown statistically, the social mechanisms on the ground through which political activity by these political actors leads to increasing participation by people in protests is not shown. 

This perhaps calls for an ethnographic approach. There is one important factual mistake in the book. There is a Kashipur in the state of Uttarakhand. But it is the Kashipur in Rayagada district of Odisha where the collaborative aluminum project by Canadian multinational Alcan and the Indian company Hindalco was planned. It is not the Kashipur in the state of Uttarakhand as the book mentions.

These limitations are minor, and the book is a welcome addition to the studies on protest movements in India. It brings a much needed comparative (both intra-state and inter-state) dimension to this literature. It also helps us to think about looking beyond straightforward Marxist formulations while discussing protest movements, politics and the state.

Details About the Book: Ashok Swain. 2010. Struggle against the state: social network and protest mobilization in India.  Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Limited. xxiv+158 pp.  ISBN – 978 – 1 – 4094 – 0867 – 3.

Note: This review was first published in the journal Contemporary South Asia in 2012.