Indians are agitated, govt stat says so

Indians appear to be more on agitation mode in the past couple of years with official statistics showing a steep rise in protests compared to the beginning of this decade.

Among them, government employees are the most agitative as their numbers are soaring while students and labourers also add up to the number of protests.

While the number of various modes of agitations rose by 14,415 for a period of four years between 2011 and 2014, the corresponding rise between 2014 and 2016 is 28,351.

Opposition leaders attribute the rise in numbers mainly due to the policies pursued by the Narendra Modi government, though a number of agitations were against respective state governments and local bodies.

"These numbers show there are a huge discontent and disillusionment among people. Government is failing to meet the expectations of people in fulfilling the poll promises. Our farmers, students, labourers and employees are on the streets. One has to think why it is so," CPI National Secretary D Raja told DH.

According to the 'Data on Police Organisations 2017', there were 1,15,837 agitations across the country in 2016 as against 1.09 lakh in 2015.

An examination of previous Data on Police Organisations reports by Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) showed that there were 87,486 protests in 2014 while it was 73,341 in 2011.

Almost all sorts of agitations, whether it is communal, students, labourers, government employees and by parties, all witnessed an almost double increase in numbers between 2011 and 2016.

While there were 23,074 agitations by government employees in 2016 as against 17,628 in the previous year, showing a sharp increase. Students' agitation showed a marginal increase from 9,454 to 10,205. There were 6,587 communal agitations, down from 8,061. Political parties organised 29,400 agitations while 33,582 were marked in 'others' category.

Uttarakhand recorded the maximum agitation of 21,966 followed by Tamil Nadu 17,043 and Punjab 11,876. Surprisingly, the report shows that the politically active Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state in the country, had only 67 protests. Karnataka witnessed 3,441 protests, including 1,457 communal agitations, in 2016 while the national capital had 7,904 protests.