People may damage a bus and attack its driver when the bus has run over a child. This is an isolated incident of protest. Since it flares up and dies down it is not a social movement. A social movement requires sustained collective action over time. Such action is often directed against the state and takes the form of demanding changes in state policy or practice. Spontaneous, disorganised protest cannot be called a social movement either. Collective action must be marked by some degree of organisation. This organisation may include a leadership and a structure that defines how members relate to each other, make decisions and carry them out. Those participating in a social movement also have shared objectives and ideologies. A social movement has a general orientation or way of approaching to bring about (or to prevent) change. These defining features are not constant. They may change over the course of a social movement's life. Social movements often arise with the aim of bringing about changes on a public issue, such as ensuring the right of the tribal population to use the forests or the right of displaced people to settlement and compensation. Think of other issues that social movements have taken up in the past and present. While social movements seek to bring in social change, counter movements sometimes arise in defence of status quo.
Read the passage above and answer the following questions.
Which one of the following is NOT a social movement?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → All India Trade Union Congress
Option (4) All India Trade Union Congress — Not a social movement (Correct). The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was formed in Bombay in 1920. It is an organisation, a trade union body of workers, and not a movement in itself. A social movement needs some degree of organisation, a leadership and a structure; the AITUC was such an organisation within the workers’ movement, the way the Kisan Sabhas were organisations within the peasant movement.
Note: NCERT describes the AITUC, formed in Bombay in 1920, as a broad-based organisation in its account of the workers’ movement. That the AITUC is an organisation within that movement, and not a social movement in itself, is reached by reasoning from this description.
NCERT (2025-26): “8.5 Class Based Movements Peasant Movements … At the time of Independence, we had the two most classical cases of peasant movements, namely the Tebhaga movement (1946–47) and the Telangana movement (1946–51). The first was a struggle of sharecroppers in Bengal in North Bihar for two thirds share of their produce instead of the customary half. It had the support of the Kisan Sabha and the Communist Party of India (CPI).…” “8.5 Class Based Movements Workers’ Movements … The first trade union was established in April 1918 in Madras by B.P. Wadia, a social worker and member of the Theosophical Society. During the same year, Mahatma Gandhi founded the Textile Labour Association (TLA). In 1920, the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was formed in Bombay. The AITUC was a broad-based organisation involving diverse ideologies. The main ideological groups were the communists led by S.A. Dange and M.N. Roy, the moderates led by M. Joshi and V.V. Giri and the nationalist movements which involved people like Lala Lajpat Rai and Jawaharlal Nehru.…” “8.4 Ecological Movements … According to Ramachandra Guha in his book, Unquiet Woods, villagers rallied together to save the oak and rhododendron forests near their villages. When government forest contractors came to cut down the trees, villagers, including large number of women, stepped forward to hug the trees to prevent their being felled. At stake was the question of villagers’ subsistence. All of them relied on the forest to get firewood, fodder and other daily necessities.” “Adivasi Struggles … were also a form of internal colonialism, subjugating adivasis and alienating the resources upon which they depended. Projects such as the Sardar Sarovar dam on the river Narmada in Western India and the Polavaram dam on the river Godavari in Andhra Pradesh displaced hundreds of thousands of adivasis from their original habitats.…” |