Social movements, protests and civil society

Social movements are organised challenges to power by people who feel excluded, harmed or unheard, while civil society is the space of associations, NGOs and citizen action between family, market and state. This chapter explains movements based on caste, ethnicity, gender, disability, religion and region, and shows how pressure groups, factions and leadership shape outcomes. A Dalit assertion movement, for example, may combine protest, law and electoral politics at once.