Revision summary
Older farmers’ movements centred regional price and surplus growers. Contemporary protests are longer, more national and media-scaled. MSP and farm-law politics recast the demand public. Some inclusion of women and ecology appears in slogans. Dalit labour still sits at the edge of the kisan course.
Model answer
Introduction
Yes, contemporary farmers’ movements have changed course in organisation, demand, and public, while still speaking an older kisan language of land, price, and honour.
Body
Older course
- Kisan Sabha, Tebhaga, and later new farmers’ movements around the 1980s stressed prices, subsidies, and a Bharat versus India frame, often led by surplus-caste commercial growers.
- Class of labour was thinner in that course than Desai would want.
What is changing
- MSP, repeal of farm laws, and federal bargaining made a national simultaneous public through media, an opportunity structure, not the root cause.
- Alliances across Punjab, Haryana, and western UP showed unions that can sit months at a border, a new duration and logistics.
- Some platforms now name labour, women farmers, and ecological water, a wider course than tractor-only prosperity.
- Caste tensions remain: dominant-caste leadership versus Dalit farm labour, so the course is not a simple class unification.
What persists
- Landed kisan identity, procurement politics, and suspicion of corporate contract farming.
- Village factions can split a ‘kisan’ public locally.
Discussion
- The course is more national, more mediatised, and somewhat more inclusive in slogan.
- The agrarian class map still decides who can stay at the protest and who must return to wage work.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD OLD[Price kisan unions] --> NEW[National MSP media sit-ins] NEW --> W[Wider slogans] CL[Landless labour] --> LIM[Incomplete class course]
Conclusion
Contemporary farmers’ movements are changing course toward longer, national, media-visible campaigns around MSP and corporate farming. They have not become a mazdoor movement. Change is real in method and scale, incomplete in class.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Illustrate the contribution of the Tebhaga Movement to the peasants struggle in India
Next question on this syllabus topic (2019 · Q1(b)). View answer →
-
Did they become anti-caste movements?
Not as a rule. Some solidarity appeared; leadership remains largely landed.
-
Is media the new cause?
Media scaled them. Surplus, price and law remain the cause.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2022 · Q6(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Define ethnicity . Discuss the factors responsible for the growth of ethenic movements in India. -
2022 · Q8(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Bring out the various issues involved in Dalit movements in India. -
2021 · Q2(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
What is identity politics? Discuss the main trends in Dalit movements in India -
2020 · Q7(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Evaluate the nature and scope of anthropogenic influence on Climate in India and also analyze the environmental movements arising out of it. -
2019 · Q1(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Illustrate the contribution of the Tebhaga Movement to the peasants struggle in India -
2018 · Q5(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Explain the dynamics of neo-farmers movement in contemporary India. -
2018 · Q5(e) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Elaborate the 'Me Too' Movement and its impact in India. -
2018 · Q7(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Elaborate various forms of Dalit assertions in contemporary India? Discuss.
More from this topic
Q7(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
How Dalit movements in India have facilitated their Identity formation? Analyze
Social Movements in Modern India
Dalit identity was produced by movements, not merely discovered by the census. Phule and Ambedkar supplied counter-history, a political name and Buddhist conversion. Panthers, literature, BSP and campus groups nationalised that public. Law and commemoration keep the identity visible. Internal splits exist; they do not cancel the movement-made we.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
According to you, which social reform movement has played the most effective role in uplifting the status of women? Explain.
Social Movements in Modern India
The most effective women’s social reform is the Phule–Ambedkar anti-caste line, not only bhadralok campaigns. It tied girls’ education, a critique of endogamy, and constitutional legal personhood. Sati abolition and widow remarriage opened the public question but had a narrower class-caste base. Hindu Code, later feminist litigation and Shah Bano debates inherit that citizenship frame. Patriarchy continues; effectiveness means a changed legal and educational grammar, not a finished utopia.
Q8(a) · UPSC Mains 2024 · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Highlight the major contributions of the reform movements in pre-independent India
Social Movements in Modern India
Reform movements made custom criticisable and legislable before Independence. Sati abolition, widow remarriage and girls’ schooling are core gender contributions. Brahmo, Arya, Aligarh and Singh Sabha recast religious communities. Phule, Narayana Guru and Ambedkar pushed reform beyond elite salons. Limits include caste-class narrowness; the institutional legacy remains large.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.