Protest is a critical political tool for groups without secure access to water resources. Theeffectiveness of protest is largely dependent on the ability of groups to organize themselves andensure that they are perceived as legitimate entities. The purpose of this study is to examine theways in which intra-movement groups are organized and how they manage their legitimacy. Thecase 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 andobservational data collected over a three-month period were coded for themes. Results show thatMahanadi River movement groups were organized factionally and spatially. Further, MahanadiRiver movement groups managed their legitimacy using two related mechanisms: selectiveidentity deployment and tokenism. These findings point to a trend in socio-political movementsin which movement groups that are spatially, socially, and politically closer to centers of powertokenize the identities and experiences of their factional counterparts in order to boost their ownlegitimacy. In doing so, within-movement understandings of legitimacy are re-constructed,resulting in the subversion of tokenized groups’ interests. This process renders protest, a criticalpolitical tool, useless to those groups who need it most. This paper concludes by suggestingways in which the findings may be applied to broader socio-political movement contexts.
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Protesting on Behalf: Constructing Legitimacy in Water Movements
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