PEOPLE’S PROTEST AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Social scientists in general and sociologists in particular have conducted many empirical studies on protests and movements. Many activists have also written about their personal experiences relating to such protest movements. With a desire to find out how people’s protest originates in a given social structure and its influence on people and society, the book brings the story of the voices of the natives and reflects on its influence in the wider world. It is about a successful people’s protest in Baliapal, Odisha against the proposed Missile Testing Range of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Government of India. This missile testing centre project was supposed to displace 55 villages covering an area of 102 sq. kms, with more than 1,00,000 people. Based on both primary and secondary data, the study tries to articulate the following issues relating to ideology, organisation, leadership and strategy of this movement.
— Why did this agitation emerge?
— What kind of ideology it subscribed?
— How the resentment was mobilised and translated into a protest movement?
— Who provided the leadership and what were the strategies?
— What was the impact of this movement in the area in terms of its social structure?
Conceptualising this protest movement in the context of structural and organisational aspects, this study tries to understand the people’s resistance and their mass participation in the agitation.
Such protest movements are a postmodernist expression of contemporary society, which constantly reinforces the society and its people to return to the past and return to the nature. The book will be of special interest to civil society activists, NGOs, policy makers, politicians, change agents, and sociologists at large.