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Social Change and Development in India New social movements are not just about ‘old’ issues of economic inequality. Nor are they organised along class lines alone.Identity politics, cultural anxieties and aspirations are essential elements in creating social movements and occur in ways that are difficult to trace to class-based inequality. Often, these social movements unite participants across class boundaries. For instance, the women’s movement includes urban, middle-class feminists as well as poor peasant women. The regional movements for separate statehood bring together different groups of people who do not share homogeneous class identities. In a social movement, questions of social inequality can occur alongside other, equally important, issues. This will be clear when we discuss the Chipko movement in the next section. 8.4 E cological M ovements For much of the modern period the greatest emphasis has been laid on development. Over the decades there has been a great deal of concern about the unchecked use of natural resources and a model of development that creates new needs that further demands greater exploitation of the already depleted natural resources. This model of development has also been critiqued for assuming that all sections of people will be beneficiaries of development. Thus big dams displace people from their homes and sources of livelihood. Industries displace agriculturalists from their homes and livelihood. The impact of industrial pollution is yet another story. Here we take just one example of an ecological movement to examine the many issues that are interlinked in an ecological movement. A ctivity 8.4 Find out some instances of environmental pollution from your region. Discuss. You canalsohaveaposterexhibitionofallyour findings. The Chipko Movement, an example of the ecological movement, in the Himalayan Chipko activists gather on World Enviornment Day at foothills is a good example of Saklana in 1986 such intermingled interests and ideologies. According to Ramachandra Guha in his book, Unquiet Woods, villagers rallied together to save the oak and rhododendron forests near their 116 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. Reprint 2026-27