What i have read be it movements or seen or understood from real life, i believe collective action mostly fails. According to me, it just shifts the power from earlier parties to the people initiating collective action. People who actually take the lead or are active members in it are not able to acquire power. The weak continue to stay weak no matter what weapons they select and are now made powerless at the hands of new parties which ousted the earlier ones.
So my question is just this... why collective action when it is just a paradigm shift?
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I agree with you Tanima when you say that the weak remain weak. I am saying this in the context of the state of Jharkhand where a lot of collective action from the last 150 years or so and that had led to the formation of Jharkhand. The demand for Jharkhand had been there because the leaders who had originally spearheaded this movement wanted the naive and poor tribals to get their due share of rights, resources and power. the movement gained ground and as it acquired a political shape, the vested interests of its new leaders under the flagship of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha(JMM)came into light. With the creation of the new state, all promises of giving the tribals what is rightfully theirs have been proven false. Nothing has been done to better their lot and the most ironical part of the story is that now thare is no collective action on the part of the innocent tribals to demand their share. The Shibu Soren government was eck dep in corruption. All his efforts during his regime had gone in filling his private coffers. He has not been able to secure land to tribals, secure jobs to them, give them even the basic conditions of life, let alone any upliftment or development. Now why doesn't he make any effort to ensure the right information reaches the nedy at the right time - simply because he knows that knowledge is power and he certainly doesn't want to share his power with others. He knows that the day he empowers the weak, that very day he will lose his power. The problem is that the powerful elite do not want the weak and powerless to get access to power and information.
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