Protesting on Behalf: Constructing Legitimacy in Water Movements

Abstract

Protest is a critical political tool for groups without secure access to water resources. The effectiveness of protest is largely dependent on the ability of groups to organize themselves and ensure that they are perceived as legitimate entities. The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which intra-movement groups are organized and how they manage their legitimacy. The case of the Mahanadi River movement in Odisha, India is used to explore questions of identity, legitimacy, and representation in a fractured socio-political movement. Interview and observational data collected over a three-month period were coded for themes. Results show that Mahanadi River movement groups were organized factionally and spatially. Further, Mahanadi River movement groups managed their legitimacy using two related mechanisms: selective identity deployment and tokenism. These findings point to a trend in socio-political movements in which movement groups that are spatially, socially, and politically closer to centers of power tokenize the identities and experiences of their factional counterparts in order to boost their own legitimacy. In doing so, within-movement understandings of legitimacy are re-constructed, resulting in the subversion of tokenized groups’ interests. This process renders protest, a critical political tool, useless to those groups who need it most. This paper concludes by suggesting ways in which the findings may be applied to broader socio-political movement contexts.