Revision summary
New social movements organise identity, ecology, gender, and everyday life beside the wage. Touraine, Melucci, and Offe named the European type. India: Chipko, Narmada, women’s and Dalit movements. Recognition and redistribution often travel together. Repertoires of strike and march are not abandoned.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
New social movements are those that, from the late twentieth century, organised around identity, ecology, gender, and peace as much as around the wage. What is new is not the fact of protest. It is the claim, the base, and often the style.
Body
Against the old labour-party model
- Alain Touraine and Alberto Melucci stressed identity, everyday life, and cultural codes.
- Claus Offe noted a shift from distribution to grammar of forms of life, with middle-class and educated cores.
- They are not always “post-material” in poor societies; ecology and displacement are material.
What is new
- Bases beyond the industrial workplace: students, women, Adivasis, urban neighbourhoods.
- Issues of body, river, language, and dignity, not only wage and hours.
- Network forms, media, and NGOs beside the classic union and party.
- Global framing: environment and human rights talk.
Indian reference
- Chipko and later Narmada Bachao Andolan tied ecology to livelihood and displacement.
- Women’s movements after the 1970s raised dowry, work, and law, a gendered public that the old left had underplayed.
- Dalit, Adivasi, and sexuality movements claim recognition as well as redistribution, which Nancy Fraser’s pair helps name.
- Farmers’ and informal workers’ protests show that “new” and “old” often mix.
What is not new
- Charles Tilly’s repertoire still includes strike, march, and petition.
- Caste associations and religious mobilisations use new media for old closures.
Caution
- “New” can be a North-Atlantic periodisation. Indian movements long mixed land, faith, and community.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD OLD[Labour party wage] --> MIX[Indian mix] NSM[Identity ecology gender] --> MIX NSM --> NET[Networks media NGO] MIX --> CLAIM[Recognition and redistribution]
Conclusion
What is new is the centrality of identity, ecology, gender, and networked form beside the wage. In India, Chipko, Narmada, women’s and Dalit movements illustrate that mix. The wage and the party have not vanished; the agenda has widened.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Discuss the regional variations of kinship system in Indian society
Next question on this syllabus topic (2017 · Q7(b)). View answer →
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Are farmers’ movements new social movements?
They are often old in class base and new in media and rights framing. The label is a tool, not a box.
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Did NSM replace class?
They decentred the factory as the only site. Class still shapes who can protest and who is heard.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2022 · Q7(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Discuss how "environmentalism" can be explained with new social movements approach. -
2026 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Explain in brief the relationship between social movement, collective action and revolution in bringing about social and political changes. -
2026 · Q5(e) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
How do different theories explain social dimensions of social movements? Discuss. -
2025 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
How can you assess the significance of social movements in the digital era? Explain -
2024 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Underline the role of social media in contemporary social movements and describe its challenges
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