Social Changes and Movements

The late 1970s, observes Ramachandra Guha, saw a churn in political and social terms. Politicians seemed to have abandoned ideology in favour of expediency and the polity had become fragmented. On the social level the sections of society that had been oppressed for so long began to assert themselves, and this led to a certain amount of social turmoil. There were new social movements, such as the feminist and the environmentalist. The older movements, such as the trade union movement, spread out into fresh areas, such as mines, and there were campaigns for equal wages for men and women, education, health and safety. The liberated press wrote at length and on a wide range of subjects. And technology in the form of the new offset printing presses helped disseminate the location of newspapers and journals. Investigative journalism began with its lens on crime and corruption. Readership expanded, especially in small towns as did journalism in Indian languages. And a civil liberties movement became active.

The social classes – the OBCs – had reaped economic power through the Green Revolution and the land reforms and also gained political power. (The Socialists and the Lok Dal were mostly formed of the OBCs.) They now sought a space in the administrative system. The Janata government in January 1979 appointed the Second Backward Classes Commission, popularly known as the Mandal Commission after its chairman Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal, a former chief minister of Bihar. Its remit was to examine whether reservation in jobs for OBCs should be there in the central administrative system.