The recent history of development in countries, like those in South Asia is characterised by the persistence of mass poverty and aggravating inequality with a large part of the population virtually excluded from the ‘growing’ spheres of economy and society. Agriculture in India, for instance, has remained a low productivity, low-income economic activity. Nevertheless, a large majority of small peasants and landless labourers depend upon agriculture as the only source of income. Since 1970s, i.e. the era of class-based old social movements, rural areas have witnessed changes ranging from transport and communication to availability of non-agricultural occupations. In the literature, the period of late 1980s signify the emergence of ‘new’ social movements. In this pressing context, the paper shall present findings from restudy of a village in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra, India.

The paper presents the summary profile of the study village in terms of caste and class-distribution of land, assets, employment and associated features of unfreedom. The paper highlights its analytical exploration from a common refrain in the study village: “there is too much politics nowadays in the village” and attempts to conceptualise social movements from a localised perspective and argues that the processes of formation of such movements undergo complex dynamics of motivations, locations and perceptions of anticipated change. The paper further argues that the study village signifies ‘past as present’ where unsolved issues of land and caste/social power persist along with the living memory of older struggles. At the same time, the spaces for negotiation are approached through a disconnected process of power struggle, often, referred in local settings as ‘politics’. The paper hypothesises that studies of social and political movements need to explore the meanings of power at local levels and gain insights about material and non-material relations of power to explain social change, or the lack of it, in a more far-reaching manner.