Name: Shayan Lahiri

Roll No: 2010078

The social change I will focus on is the Naxal movement in India. First I will give a brief history on the
movement before explaining why its relevant from a social perspective.
The movement was started in the late 1960s in Naxalbari, West Bengal, as an uprising by the farmers
against the oppressive policies enforced by their landlords. It started out as a small movement but
gained in intensity when the movement caught the attention of the people who believed in Marxist
ideologies. These people formed the All India Coordination Committee of Communist
Revolutionaries to fight for the farmers. The group believed in boycotting elections and having
armed struggles against the state to get their point across and bring about change. This group didnt
last for long on account of ideological difference between the leaders and hence, ended up getting
splintered into smaller groups.
This continued over the next 3 decades till a unified party, CPI (Maoists), was formed in 2004. The
leaders finally had a common agenda once more which was to promote the agenda of Marxism,
Leninism and Maoism. They believed that that the economy of the state should be driven by the
collective society instead of being dictated by capitalists. The party believed that to achieve this,
they would have to carry out an armed uprising against the government with the help of the
farmers, adivasis, tribal communities, etc. Basically, anyone who was downtrodden and denied their
basic rights by the government were drafted into the party to carry out the struggle. Thus, the Naxal
movement started.
The naxal movement has changed the fabric of society in rural areas of Central, East and South India.
The government initially tried to suppress the movement but failed to do so. Then they tried to
reduce the influence of the naxals by carrying out development work which had been held back for a
long time from those regions. This measure had a degree of success in making the locals believe in
the government again and withdraw their support to the naxals. The government has also admitted
that the naxals are the biggest internal threat to national security and have formed several task
forces for dealing with the naxals. In several areas, development work attempted by the government
has failed because the naxals stopped all work from being carried out by the contractors.
Thus, we can see how one movement has led to a change in the social fabric of life in the affected
regions of India. The government has been forced to bring forward development to previously
undeveloped areas in a bid to win the support of the locals and erode the influence of the naxals in
the region.