Breaking down the question

The command bring out the main features asks for an analytical characterisation, not a narrative history. Twenty marks call for a full-length answer that identifies the defining attributes of farmers' movements — their social base, ideology, organisation and demands — and locates them within the sociology of social movements in modern India.

A crucial distinction underlies the question: between the older peasant movements over land and tenancy and the new farmers' movements of the post-Green-Revolution decades over prices and terms of trade. The examiner rewards candidates who register this shift and treat the farmers' movements as a distinct, market-oriented phenomenon.

Threads to develop:

  • The distinction between peasant movements and the new farmers' movements.
  • The defining features — social base, ideology, organisation, method and demands.
  • An assessment of their significance and their limits.

How to approach it

Begin by situating farmers' movements within the study of social movements and by drawing the line between the old peasant struggles and the new farmers' agitations that emerged from the late 1970s. This framing organises the whole answer.

Devote the core to the features — the commercially oriented, surplus-producing social base; the Bharat versus India ideology; the non-party, single-issue organisation; and the repertoire of price-centred agitation. Then assess their achievements and the criticisms of their class character. Anchor the discussion in the work of scholars such as M. S. A. Rao and D. N. Dhanagare, and connect the movements to the agrarian change set in motion by the Green Revolution.

Model answer

Farmers' movements are among the most significant forms of collective action in modern India, and analysing their features requires locating them within the broader study of social movements — sustained, organised collective efforts to bring about or resist change. A sociological account must first draw a fundamental distinction.

From peasant movements to farmers' movements. The old agrarian struggles of the colonial and early post-independence period — the Tebhaga, Telangana and various tenant agitations — were essentially peasant movements, concerned with land, rent, tenancy security and freedom from feudal exploitation, and were often radical and class-based. The new farmers' movements, which rose to prominence from the late 1970s and the 1980s in the wake of the Green Revolution, were qualitatively different. Led by organisations such as the Bharatiya Kisan Union under Mahendra Singh Tikait and the Shetkari Sanghatana under Sharad Joshi, and by movements in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, they represented not the landless but the market-oriented cultivator.

Social base. The first defining feature is their base among the surplus-producing, commercially oriented farmers — the middle and rich peasantry who had benefited from the new agricultural technology and were now enmeshed in the market. These were producers seeking better returns, not tillers seeking land.

Ideology. Their characteristic ideology was framed by Sharad Joshi as Bharat versus India — a contradiction between the exploited countryside, Bharat, and the privileged urban-industrial sector, India. The grievance was one of adverse terms of trade: farmers argued that state policy kept farm prices low to subsidise urban consumers and industry, draining the rural economy. Their outlook was thus economic and interest-based rather than revolutionary.

Demands. Flowing from this, their demands were market-centred — remunerative prices for produce, higher minimum support prices, lower prices for inputs such as electricity, water, seeds and fertiliser, waiver of loans and remission of debts. They sought a better deal within the system, not its overthrow.

Organisation and method. A further feature was their non-party, apparently apolitical character. They mobilised across party lines around single issues, drawing on the wider tradition of non-party political processes that scholars identified in this period. Their organisation rested on the numerical strength and social solidarity of farming communities, often mobilising caste and regional identities. Their methods were typically mass, disciplined and non-violent — rallies, road and rail blockades, refusal to pay dues, and dramatic gatherings that demonstrated sheer numbers.

Assessment. These movements achieved real successes, extracting price concessions and loan waivers and establishing the farmer as a formidable political constituency. Yet sociologists have noted their limits. Because their base lay among landowning, surplus-producing cultivators, they tended to speak for the dominant agrarian classes while the interests of agricultural labourers, tenants and marginal farmers received little attention — a class bias that qualified their claim to represent the whole countryside. Their reliance on caste solidarities and their regional concentration further narrowed their reach.

In sum, the farmers' movements of modern India are best characterised as new social movements of the commercial peasantry — market-oriented in demand, populist in ideology, non-party in form and mass in method — a decisive shift from the class struggles of the older peasant movements to the interest-group politics of the successful cultivator.

Examiner's perspective

The examiner is testing whether the candidate can characterise a movement analytically and, above all, whether the crucial distinction between old peasant movements and new farmers' movements is understood. Scripts that blur the two, or that merely narrate particular agitations, remain average.

High marks reward an answer organised around clear features — social base, ideology, demands, organisation and method — and enriched by concepts such as Bharat versus India, terms of trade and non-party mobilisation. Naming scholars like Sharad Joshi, Tikait, M. S. A. Rao and D. N. Dhanagare demonstrates command of the literature.

The finest scripts close with a genuine assessment that credits the movements' achievements while exposing their class character — their tendency to voice the interests of the prosperous cultivator rather than the agrarian poor. That balance of characterisation and critique is what a twenty-mark answer demands.