From Dharna to Demonstration: Determinants of Political Protest Participation in India

Abstract

Political protests are an important indicator of public opinion in India, where social movements have spearheaded social and economic change since independence. In recent years, there have been increasingly large protests in India as well as a severe crackdown on political dissent. While many scholars have studied the determinants of protest participation across the world, there has been only one study in the Indian context, conducted by Spehr and Dutt based on the 1996 World Values Survey. Recognizing this gap in the literature, this thesis utilizes a mixed methods approach to examine the nature and determinants of protest participation in India. In particular, I seek to understand who participates in protests and why they choose to do so against the contemporary backdrop of democratic backsliding and rising Hindu nationalism. To this end, I conducted two stages of quantitative analysis, testing the role of five sets of determinants—demographics, political views, institutional beliefs, civic behaviors, and cost perceptions—on decisions to protest. First, I employed nested logistic regression models using data from the 2019 Asian Barometer Survey. Second, I contribute to the literature by conducting my own 2024 Original Nationwide Survey, which generated a nationally representative sample with data on additional important variables. In this second stage of analysis, I once again conducted logistic regressions to test the determinants of protest participation as well as reasons cited for nonparticipation in protests. I also conducted observational analysis of the motivating issues and factors for protest participation using the 2024 Original Nationwide Survey data. Finally, to contextualize these findings and gain a deeper understanding of the nature of protests in India, I conducted a systematic content analysis of newspaper articles and in-depth interviews. Several interesting findings emerge from my regression models, which are confirmed by my qualitative analysis. First, I find that there is a negative correlation between support for the local and state governments and protest participation, suggesting that protests are most often an expression of dissatisfaction with these two levels of government. Second, I find that well-educated individuals are significantly more likely to participate in protests, though this correlation is mediated by civic engagement behaviors such as regular news consumption and membership in community organizations, which are strong predictors of protest participation. Third, there appears to have been a demographic shift in protest participation between 2019 and 2024, with increased diversity and representation of historically marginalized groups such as women and religious minorities in the 2024 sample. Fourth, unlike in many other locations, efficacy does not appear to be the primary motivator for protest participation in India. Instead, a desire to promote one’s own conception of morality is found to be the most cited reason for participation, and protesting is found to be positively correlated with altruism. Fifth, violence and government repression appear to be significant barriers to protest participation as observed through analyses of the survey data and news reports, signifying the need for more meaningful protection of the right to dissent. Understanding who participates in protests is important since it allows for an examination of who signals their sociopolitical preferences to the government and how.