Assessing the Trajectories of People’s Movements in South Asia

Assessing the Trajectories of People’s Movements in South Asia

Dipti Ranjan SAHU, University of Lucknow, India

Key words: Cycles of Protests, State, Community, Mobilisation, South Asia

Social movements and protests in contemporary South Asia are the reflection of socio-political instability, emerging voices of dissents and rising aspirations of the people. Contentious collective issues triggered many violent ‘cycles of protests’ which had shown enormous repercussions on almost all the spheres of public life, sometimes emanating complete breakdown of order. Volatile movements, sluggish nature of the state, and sometimes proactive temperament of communities often aggravate the problem.

The state cannot accommodate all the demands, often competing demands by communities. The state has been criticized for the authoritarian and militant operations. The relationship between the state, communities and social movements in various parts of South Asia require comprehensive understanding of protests and movements through which one can assess the broader socio-political structures in various sites of Protests. The session makes an attempt to review various movement studies and their theoretical standpoints and tries to articulate the dynamics of existing relationships between the state, communities, Corporate and people’s protests in various countries of South Asia before and after pandemic. Further, it also tries to articulate the role of caste, class, gender and ethnicity, various grassroots and international organizations in the process of mobilisations.