Why do people protest? Especially in this climate of mass surveillance and lethal crowd control methods, why do thousands of people risk their education, livelihoods, and even lives to stand up to mighty governments? At the end of the day, does it change anything for anyone? Do the activists and their supporters ever win any battles against the all-powerful authorities that govern us?
In the past, people of India have seen protests like the anti-CAA–NRC agitations come to an abrupt halt during COVID-19. Protests following PhD scholar Rohith Vemula’s death due to institutional casteism didn’t end caste-based oppression in the country. Villagers in Ennore have been protesting against ammonia leak from a factory for years now, but the authorities are barely listening. So is the outrage, the mobilisation, the fight really worth it?
National protests tend to be covered by mainstream media and lead to debates on television. But protests and movements in smaller towns, villages, and many states often have no cameras trained on them. Why then do people continue to agitate, often for years and sometimes for generations?
The real, and lasting, impact of protests
Analysis of protests often reduces them to projects that must achieve conclusive and immediate results, missing the point that protests emerge from anger and frustration towards systemic oppression, neglect, and harm. They are often led and sustained by people who have lived experience of marginalisation. For many of them, it isn’t a choice to stand up to the powers that be; it is a compulsion.
There’s a clear connection between the Nirbhaya protests and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 2013, which expanded the definition of rape.
The Munda, Koya, and Santhal rebellions erupted to counter the injustices meted out to Adivasis and other forest-dwelling communities. After decades of battling eviction and arrests for daring to live in the forest lands that are their homes, people organised into civil society groups and movements like Campaign for Survival and Dignity and eventually pressurised the government to pass the Forest Rights Act (FRA) in 2006.
Similarly, when people like Dayamani Barla and Soma Munda came together to protest against Jharkhand’s Koel–Karo dam project, which would have displaced thousands of Adivasis and destroyed their sacred lands, they were fighting for the survival of their people and their home.
Several progressive legislations and government schemes that India has today are a result of people taking to the streets and demanding their rights.
Grassroots organisations like Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (along with activists, academics, and other civil society groups) have played a key role in mobilising people for MGNREGA, which helped secure livelihoods for marginalised populations, and the Right to Information Act of 2005, which empowered people to demand accountability from the government. There’s a clear connection between the Nirbhaya protests and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act of 2013, which expanded the definition of rape and firmly emphasised the importance of consent in sex.
Not all protests are the same
The above protests led to tangible results. But there are also protests that have not had such neat outcomes. Are they then futile endeavours?
There are protests that go on for decades where the gains are incremental. Under the leadership of Affected Citizens of Teesta, people across three generations have been fighting against the construction of large hydropower dams on the Teesta river. While they have not been able to stop the dam constructions, the movement has instilled values of resistance and resilience among the indigenous Lepchas who reside in parts of North Sikkim that are disproportionately affected by these mega projects, and built solidarities across state borders in neighbouring West Bengal where the Teesta continues to flow.
The younger generation of Tharus combines the ethics of resistance, which they learned from their elders, with formal education.
In Chhattisgarh’s Khamariya village, the Coal Satyagraha movement—which began in 2011 as a community’s attempt to reclaim their coal from corporate mining by setting up their own coal company—now has a sophisticated architecture of trained local reporters to own their narratives and time-tested protest methods that have clearly defined roles for villagers. This is an ongoing struggle, and the villagers still regularly fight against displacement and land grab.
The Tharu Adivasis in Lakhimpur Kheri, Uttar Pradesh, have been struggling for access to their forests for more than 50 years. They have fought and lost court cases and have persevered to see valuable legislations such as FRA come into being. The younger generation of Tharus now combines the ethics of resistance, which they learned from their elders, with formal education that allows them to read laws and identify legal routes.
The legacy of ‘unsuccessful’ protests
The success of a protest cannot and should not be measured by whether it has achieved its immediate demand. Protests have ripple effects that can only be witnessed in the long run.
For example, even though many of the demands from the protests following the death of Rohith Vemula have still not been met, the mass agitations ensured that he became a crucial figure of anti-caste assertion. In an important victory, the Karnataka Rohith Vemula (Prevention of Discrimination, Exclusion or Injustice) (Right to Education and Dignity) Bill, 2026, was approved by the state cabinet in April 2026 after a decade of Rohith’s death. The bill, if it becomes a law, will safeguard the rights of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students, teachers, and non-teaching staff at educational institutions and penalise discriminatory behaviour and language towards them. If the bill materialises, it might take society a step closer to how Rohith would have wanted it to be: where the value of an individual is not reduced to their immediate identity.
Gains from protests unfold over time
The women’s movements in India can be traced to Fatima Sheikh and Savitribai Phule in the 1800s, Kamla Bhasin and Urvashi Butalia in the 1980s, Vardhineni Rosamma in the 1990s, and more recently the women who led the MeToo movement. They fought against issues such as cheap country liquor, dowry, sexual harassment, and prohibition on education for women. Each of these movements was successful in small and big ways. But more importantly, in each phase, a generation of women took a leap that made it possible for others to follow.
Even when people disagreed with the politics of the women’s movements, whether on the basis of caste, gender, or sexuality, they drew on them to create their own platforms. Maya Sharma, who learned the ropes of activism at women’s collectives in 1980s, later came to identify herself as a Lesbian, Bisexual, and Trans rights activist. Similarly, even though A Revathi doesn’t identify as a feminist, she values the understanding of equality that she gained from conversations with feminists such as Du Saraswathi and Gauri Lankesh.
This non-linear nature of protests is also what addresses the question of whether anti-CAA–NRC protests were successfully quelled. It would be easy to brush it off as protests that ran from December 2019 to March 2020 and were then shut down by state repression, and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the protests in Shaheen Bagh inspired organisations like Miles2Smile, Muslimah, and NOUS Network that focus on education, building kinship circles, and shaping a new media for marginalised Muslims in Delhi. Similarly, in Assam, various solidarity networks and advocacy groups emerged from the CAA–NRC protests to safeguard people on the verge of statelessness.
Movements, in disrupting the status quo, offer hope in trying times. They create the space to imagine and drive real change, especially for people at the margins, and build a more just, fair, and equitable society.
—
Know more
- Learn about the ongoing protests in 2026 that the mainstream media may not be covering.
- Read how the civil society in India defines democracy.
- Read why protests work even though they are polarising.
