Introduction

The current climate justice movements are perhaps the strongest advocates for a change of direction in how multispecies coexistence on our planet needs to be radically transformed. Calls for a reorganisation of resource extraction and distribution and economic structures challenge existing systems and go beyond the call for social cohesion by thinking beyond national boundaries to include human and non-human interactions. While climate movements in the Global North such as Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future or Last Generation have been successful in some cases and have a highly public profile, the youth-led climate movement in India, which emerged from the Fridays for Future strikes led by Greta Thunberg in 2019, is still in its early stages. Furthermore, previous research has hardly taken the Global South into account in its analyses of youth climate activism.

The youth-led climate movement in India throws up several opportunities for a changing social demographic in the country. While earlier environmental movements in India were led by marginalised rural populations such as peasants, fisherfolk, and indigenous communities who were directly dependent on natural resources, the emerging youth-led climate movement is led by the expanding middle class of urban centres (Guha & Alier, 1997). These young climate activists have the opportunity to politicise a previously apolitical identity of being young and raise issues of importance to young people, that of livelihood, education, and quality of life which are severely impacted by the climate crisis. Further, with the fast-paced urbanisation of the Indian population, there are emerging unique environmental problems at the heart of the urban experience which can be addressed through the movement.

However, the youth climate movement needs to first learn from and build on the existing vibrant protest tradition of India, which will allow it to be relatable to the masses. Student political action has a long, rich history in the country which can be effectively built upon for the youth climate movement goals [2]. Further, it needs to clearly articulate its politics, and engage in intentional issue, vision and motivational framing, for it to build long-term allies in other progressive social movements (Benford & Snow, 2000).

In this essay, I use frame analysis to study the way youth-led climate action groups are articulating their politics, their demands and overall integration with the collective memory and protest tradition of the Indian masses via social media channels like Instagram. Using Benford and Snow’s (2000) concept of collective action frames, I categorise each of the climate action group’s Instagram posts by diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framing (Benford & Snow, 2000). I further comment on the enhanced role of social media in 21st-century social movements but at the same time caution against an over-reliance on digital means.

Youth Activism in Independent India: A Brief Overview

Young people have played a central role in organising and mobilising in several socio-political and ecological movements during the freedom struggle and post-independence in India. Anti-caste and women’s movements in India have for decades been led by university students, who respond swiftly and in huge numbers to news of gender and/or caste discrimination.1 [4] [5] [6] [7] In recent times, just before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic students from across Universities in India led a large-scale movement against a newly introduced amendment to citizenship laws in the country that was deemed to be discriminatory against Muslim refugees. Combined with the National Register of Citizens the Act was said to be targeting Muslims within India too, attempting to make them stateless. The protests spread rapidly via social media channels operated by student unions and independent student groups. Lakhs of people joined the protests across the country, primarily led and organised by student groups.

In the past, key socio-political movements which changed the trajectory of state policy, political discourse, and public consciousness have been led by students too. In the 1970s, massive student-led agitations were organised across the country against widespread unemployment, inflation, crop failure, unfulfilled election promises and ineffective governance [2] (Chandra, 2017). These protests led to the imposition of a ‘National Emergency’ and a change in government. Many of these young people left their careers and educational journeys to join the movement.

These examples demonstrate that from the Independence struggle onwards, student mobilisation, leadership and agitation played a key role in several social movements to facilitate their expansion, consolidation and success. Against this historical and social context of vibrant student-led protests, it’s important to map the growing youth climate movement since 2019, its framing, current status and prospects in India.

Fridays for Future’s global expansion

In August 2018, fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg started striking in front of the Swedish Parliament demanding that her country’s policymakers take concrete steps to address the climate crisis. Her chosen method of striking was to skip school and sit in front of the Parliament demanding climate action. Soon the media started following her journey, as more and more young people started joining her style of protesting. The strike spread to other parts of the world, where similar protests started taking place under the broad banner of Fridays For Future (FFF).

In March 2019, across the world, 1.4 million participated in climate strikes, the first of many such strikes to be held in countries of the Global South such as India. Further, the wave of global media attention and simultaneous growth in FFF mobilisations peaked in September 2019, when around 6 million people gathered for a Global Climate Strike, demanding action on the worldwide Climate Emergency. [9] [10] The number of people joining climate strikes continued to soar until the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic which caused participation in global climate strikes to drop drastically. [11] In some countries like the UK, FFF activists have started supporting specific campaigns such as Stop Cambo and Stop Rosebank oil and gas fields. Further, many FFF activists have also started to engage deeply in the annual United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) process.

In India, the youth-led climate movement had an enthusiastic beginning. The peak of mobilisations under the FFF banner occurred in September 2019 in New Delhi, where about 2,000-3,000 young people joined the protests. Further, there has been a dearth of documentation of protest numbers and profiling of activists in India.2 The maximum number of people at a strike in a city has never breached the 3,000-4,000 mark. If one compares the number of people mobilised for climate strikes in India to European countries, it is a disappointing figure. But, more importantly, it’s a particularly discouraging figure if I compare it to earlier environmental movements in India such as the iconic Silent Valley Movement, Narmada Bachao Andolan, Chipko Movement and regional uprisings against polluting and unjust developmental projects or factories.

Environmentalism of the Poor: Break from Earlier Resource Conflicts

I believe Fridays For Future has so far failed to capture the popular imagination and forge inter-movement contacts with pre-existing unions, groups and environmental social movement organisations. In 1997, Ramachandra Guha characterised Indian environmentalism as the environmentalism of the poor. In the background of the deterioration and degradation of environmental resources in the 20th century, several rural people dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods have been forced to abandon their traditional work and migrate to cities in search of work. He characterises the context of environmental struggles in India to be a conflict over the control of, usage of and rights to common natural resources (Guha & Alier, 1997). Youth-led climate activism in the aftermath of Fridays For Future strikes paves the path for a substantially different form of environmentalism in India, which is not undertaken solely by those engaged in nature-dependent livelihoods. Urban youth engaging in climate protests are raising issues of quality of life linked to environmental degradation.

In Fritzi Titzmann’s interviews with youth climate activists in India, many mentioned the Narmada Bachao Andolan and its public figure, Medha Patkar as their source of inspiration. Starting in the 1980s, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), was an anti-dam movement in the states of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, which was supported by lakhs of young people from tribal groups affected by the dam and youth from urban centres3 (Nepal, 2009) (Baviskar, 1997) (Nepal, 2009). Guha and Alier (1997) elaborate on the vocabulary of protest used during the Narmada Bachao Andolan:

“The Narmada movement has operated simultaneously on several flanks: a strong media campaign, court petitions, and the lobbying of key players such as the World Bank, which was to fund a part of the dam project. Most effectively, though, it has deployed a dazzlingly varied vocabulary of protest, in defence of the rights of the peasants and tribal communities which were to be displaced by the dam.” (P. 13)

Among their many strategies of direct action, the first was the collective show of strength in cities in the forms of rallies, marches and public meetings. Second, is the disruption of economic life through road blockages, strikes or hartals4, wherein the economic price the state and citizens have to pay is raised. The third strategy involved sit-down strikes s aimed at specific authorities. Along with this dharnas would be carried out at dam sites to prevent further construction. The fourth strategy was to build moral pressure on the state. This was achieved through messaging delivered by respected, senior social leaders such as Baba Amte5 during NBA. Further, bhook hartals6, jal samarpan7 undertaken by leaders of the movement showed their self-sacrifice, courage and resilience in the face of state oppression and injustice(Guha & Alier, 1997) (Nepal, 2009) (Khagram, 2018).

Through these strategies, the Narmada Bachao Andolan and other social-environmental movements such as the Chipko Movement have all used Gandhian methods and ideology for their motivational and prognostic framing. Satyagraha, a political action which is non-violent and invokes the truth (Satya) formed a major strategic plank of the NBA. For example, the NBA used Gandhian ideas and values to put forward the framing that large-scale development projects harm the rural poor. The environmental movement in India has invoked Gandhi’s idea of a village-centred local economy in India time and again, especially during the NBA and the Chipko movement. (Nepal, 2009)

According to Guha and Alier (1997) in “Varieties of Environmentalism”,

“Mahatma Gandhi provides the environmental movement with both a vocabulary of protest and an ideological critique of development in independent India.” (P. 15)

There is a distinctive shift in methods of protest being undertaken today by the youth-led climate movement in India. Generally, they do not espouse Gandhian ideals of environmentalism, unlike earlier environmental movements. Instead, they use the framing provided by Greta Thunberg and Fridays For Future in the West focusing on intergenerational equity, the role of climate science and pushing for national climate policies. Along with the issues being different from earlier environmental movements in India, the Fridays for Future strikes also adopt significantly different methods of protest. Their key methods of protest involve skipping school on Fridays to demand climate action from the government and digital ‘strikes’ where young people post pictures of themselves holding a placard with a particular slogan demanding climate action while tagging relevant government authorities on these social media posts.

Fridays For Future in India: Difficult statistics

There is a definitive dearth of literature on youth climate activism in Global South countries[18]. Most research papers refer to Fridays For Future’s (FFF) social media handles and official websites to gain insights into the number of people mobilised for each climate strike. However, this method is inaccurate when used for countries like India. They feature inflated numbers in terms of the number of people joining each city and the number of cities participating in a climate strike. For example, according to the strike statistics featured in FFF’s database, on 25th September 2020, there were 68 strikes across India, and on 25 March 2022, there were 32 strikes. (Picked these particular dates at random to illustrate the discrepancies) FFF India’s official Instagram page which amplifies the call to action for every city during Global Climate Strikes and subsequently posts pictures from each city and strike shows that only 18 cities had global climate strikes on 25th September 2022 (vis-a-vis 68 strikes mentioned on the official website). Furthermore, even for the 25th March strikes in 2022, only 13 cities organised climate strikes in India (vis-a-vis 32 strikes mentioned on the official website).

At the peak of mobilisations in September 2019, not more than 50 cities (against 148 cities on 20th September and 179 strikes on 27th September listed on the website) had joined the climate strikes in India, as evidenced by the media’s coverage and FFF India’s own Instagram page posts during that time. According to the website, in September 2019, cities like Nur Sarai mobilised 1750 people, Pelling mobilised 350 people, Nagaon 260 people, Mahbubnagar 350 people, Kolhapur 6700 people, Karnal 300 people and the list goes on. All these cities particularly have never had a single FFF chapter or even a climate strike, let alone those many people joining the climate strike.

This tells us two things. One, the statistics provided by the organisers are unreliable. Two, the scale of FFF mobilisations and its impact is overstated. Reliable data about the number of people joining the protests and their locations would help us trace the extent of diffusion of the Fridays For Future strikes, and the way diffusion occurs across cities. It would also help us study in depth about which kinds of social networks are the most effective at mobilising young people for climate strikes. Even if climate strikes have led to to tangible impacts in terms of policy change, increased institutional and media dialogue on climate change or enabled an expansion in consciousness about the issue, tracing the impact of the climate strikes in particular on these impacts becomes difficult.

Even if the youth-led climate movement has not received the public support, it claims to have mobilised, it still marks a definitive shift in Indian environmentalism and is therefore worth studying. First of all, the Youth Climate movement which emerged in 2019 was characteristically urban-based and saw participation from young people of the middle class to upper-class families. Even in the West, the strikes were mostly attended by youth whose parents we well educated. This opens up new opportunities for the growth of environmental movements in urban areas in India, which was distinctively rural and working-class based earlier. More importantly, it mobilised a large number of first-time protestors, thereby bringing a large section of the population directly into the political realm (Kołczyńska et al., 2024) (de Moor et al., 2020). The impact of this politicisation of school children on other social movements in the future cannot be underestimated.

These climate strikes provide a platform through which young people express environmental citizenship. [21] Three elements characterize this form of environmental citizenship. First, the individual politics of sustainable consumption. The second aspect is the involvement and influence of citizens in decision-making. Third, environmental citizenship also involves a social movement centred on environmental justice wherein young people propose demands, shape the collective future vision and further build the discourse in “intersectional” terms of how climate change disproportionately impacts people according to several socio-political factors such as race, gender, geographical location, ethnicity etc.

Finally, the FFF strikes started in Europe and spread to other parts of the world primarily through mass media and social media channels. [22] [23] [24] Within India, most young people learned about the strikes through social media. The climate strikes were spontaneous and lacked organising support from any of the pre-existing Social Movement Organisations in India. It was initiated and led by groups of young people coming together to adopt the method of skipping schools on Friday to demand robust climate action policies by the state. The emergence and success of these self-motivated groups of people who started organising themselves to form either FFF local chapters or other youth-led climate action groups are rooted in how well they have leveraged social media platforms to diffuse the idea of climate strikes to a larger population.

Networked mobilisations in the digital age

Manuel Castells has characterised our modern society as being a network society. According to him, power is multidimensional and operates through networks. Further, these networks of power influence the human mind and choices predominantly through multimedia networks of mass communication. (Castells, 2011) According to him, mass communication networks are major sources of building collective power. Young people’s activism today is especially reliant on and expressed through the internet. Any social movement is involved in framing its core issues, future vision, and motivation for people to join the cause, primarily in the meaning-making of the world we live in, with its current status quo. This “process of meaning-making is largely dependent on the messages and frames created, formatted and diffused in multimedia communication networks”(Castells, 2013).

According the Castells, the transformation of the nature of multimedia communication networks because of the Internet and resultant social media channels has altered the forms of meaning construction, and therefore the production of power relationships. He believes, that social movements today are exercising “counter-power” by using autonomous channels of mass communication via the Internet (Castells, 2013). Digital social networks provide a platform for social movement actors for relatively uncontrolled and unrestricted space for framing their issues, an alternative vision, and motivating people to engage in collective actions among other things[27].

Social media frame analysis

Link to codebook of media frame analysis

Fridays For Future has relied largely on networked mobilisations through social media channels as documented by several research reports [27] (Wahlström et al., 2019) [23]. As a consequence, we have chosen to conduct a frame analysis of the content shared via Instagram pages of youth-led climate action groups in India which sprung up as an outcome of the Fridays For Future movement in 2019. We used three major collective action frames as laid out by Benford and Snow (2000). Collective action frames developed in social movements by movement actors and mobilisers are aimed at developing an interpretive framework for people to identify, understand and label occurrences in their daily lives and the world at large. These frames are specially developed to help mobilise support for specific causes and demobilise the antagonists. Collective action frames consist of three categories: diagnostic framing, prognostic framing and motivational framing.

Under the broad category of diagnostic framing, we had three sub-codes - injustice frames, problem identification, and problem attribution. Further, under the broad category of prognostic framing, we had two sub-codes- counter-framing to given solutions and theory of change about what will solve the issue. Third, under the broad category of motivational framing, we laid out 5 sub-codes- rationale for engaging in collective action, the efficacy of collective action, duty, urgency and severity (Benford & Snow, 2000).

Methodology

First, out of a list of 70+ groups, I identified 12 active groups on Instagram. I qualified them as active by identifying groups which had posted at least 6 times on their Instagram by mid-2023. 8 of these groups are under the Fridays For Future banner. The choice of Instagram as a platform for content analysis was based on the preliminary finding that most youth-led climate action groups only have a digital presence on Instagram or are most active there, among all the platforms they operate. Instagram was the most preferred platform for publicising protest events by the organisers. For example, a paper found that Twitter was primarily being used to raise awareness about local and global issues, but not to mobilise people. [24]

There is No Earth B emerged as the most active group with 177 posts, Climate Front India with 152 posts was second, Youth For Climate India with 139 posts was third, fourth being Fridays For Future Pune with 85 posts, and fifth was Fridays For Future India with 83 posts. The overall trends and group-specific trends for the five most active groups are presented below.

Group-Specific Findings

There is No Earth B

First is ‘There Is No Earth B’, a youth-led group which engages primarily in clean-up drives and digital campaigning on environmental issues. Posters detailing clean-up drive event details were mostly not coded under any of the sub-codes, since it is an inherently de-politicised action which is service-based. In an earlier article, I argued

“Clean-ups are, simply put, a ‘direct service’, a short-term fix that makes a specific place look clean and hygienic for a while until the next time people come and litter.”

“As laid out by the Spectrum of Social Change by Bobo, Kendall and Max, we have to move from service, towards education, to self-help, then advocacy and finally direct action organising.”

In There Is No Earth B’s posts, problem identification occurred 43 times, problem attribution occurred 23 times, and injustice frame occurred 5 times. Injustice frame refers to the identification of groups or sections of society which would be/are negatively impacted by a certain action/ project/ law /policy. This conspicuous prevalence of injustice frames is true across all climate action groups we analysed. There is No Earth B does a good job of articulating the problem and identifying the perpetrators but does not identify for its audience the “victims” of the issue at hand, and the ways in which they will be impacted. Further, There is No Earth B has a consistent and strong counter-framing to state-backed technocratic solutions, with the theme emerging 15 times in their content. They consistently use interactive and creative reels and written content to counter the idea of tree plantations as solutions propagated by the state and industries. Along with this, they also pose a solid counter-narrative to the idea of individual carbon footprint and individualised climate action as the saviour of the planet. However, at least 70% of their reels had no substantial contextualisation or framing, which indicates that there is an immense potential to use reels as a better informed and educative medium.

Climate Front India

Diagnostic and motivational framing was highest in the posts of Climate Front India. Diagnostic framing showed up a total of 85 times and motivational framing about 29 times, both figures were higher than any other climate action group. Climate Front India regularly organised on-ground direct actions in different parts of India. They were one of the only climate action groups that organised long-term campaigns like ‘Save Raika Forest’ and ‘Justice For Joshimath’, and did not simply engage in sporadic digital actions. Nevertheless, prognostic framing was missing from their content, with it showing up only 7 times in total. While they provide a thorough critique of the current model of development in the Himalayas, there is a need to provide an alternative model and vision for the region.

Youth For Climate India

Youth For Climate India has a healthy balance of offline and online events and actions that it mobilises people around. However, they have not mobilised people for any direct actions they organised in 2023. They simply amplify and help mobilise the youth for other social-environmental causes, where the action is being organised by some other groups. They held several events in their Climate Justice Library in Delhi, which is the only physical space opened and operated by a youth-led climate action group in India. While the Library, Thrift store and all the other programmes they run showcase the strength of their organising, as a Social Movement Organisation they can cease to be relevant if they are unable to mobilise people for direct action on environmental issues. Further, they have rarely posted consistently on a single environmental issue where they touch on all three sub-codes of diagnostic framing - injustice frames, problem identification and attribution. They are the climate group with the most content touching on their theory of change and vision with prognostic framing showing up 16 times in their content.

Fridays For Future Pune

Fridays For Future Pune performed far better than all other FFF local groups, and better in terms of organising and mobilising parameters as compared to other bigger national groups too. Their major campaign in 2023 has been against Mula Mutha River Front Development which would concretise the Mula Mutha riverbank in Pune and degrade the river for beautification purposes. They mobilised 5,000 people at one point in their campaign against the River Front Development project, an impressive number for a local FFF group. They used riverbank clean-ups as a starting point for their campaign, by educating people there and organising them to learn and care about the riverfront development project. They then went on to invoke Gandhian environmentalism and methods or a “vocabulary of protest” from earlier environmental movements such as Chipko Andolan and Narmada Bachao Andolan. (Guha & Alier, 1997)

They used Chipko Andolan’s tactic of hugging trees to indicate their perseverance in a bid to not let these trees be cut down for the River Front Development(RFD) project. They organised a gherao at Pune Municipal Corporation’s office to object to the RFD project. Further, they had citizens who had been engaging in chain fasting for a year to save the river Mula Mutha. Both of these tactics- gheraos and fasting for saving a river were tactics which had been used during the Narmada Bachao Andolan and subsequent regional environmental movements in India. They also used other methods of river-front walks, using art to engage with young people, writing competitions and organising Global Climate Strikes with clear demands for saving the Mula Mutha River. They are the only youth-led climate action group which has managed to leverage public memory of iconic methods of protest in earlier environmental movements to frame the issue and motivate people to join the struggle against the RFD project.

Fridays For Future India

Fridays For Future India is fourth with 83 posts, 12 of which are calls for volunteers and 17 posts are posters of climate strikes organised in March by other local FFF chapters. Fridays For Future India had no digital or offline campaigns running in 2023, simply sharing pictures of all local climate strikes in March and some other environmental struggles being led by other groups in India. Therefore, there was limited scope for analysis of their content. Problem identification in their content occurred 6 times, attribution twice and injustice frames once. National FFF chapters have a major role to play in other countries in providing framing for major issues and motivational framing for local groups and young protestors to join Global Climate strikes. However, motivational framing in total showed up only thrice in FFF India’s content in 2023. A high number of posts seeking volunteers might also indicate the inability to retain volunteers within the social movement organisation.

Overall Findings

Collective Action Frames and Depoliticisation

Motivational framing is almost entirely missing from the content of all climate action groups. In TENEB’s content, it shows up 12 times, in YFCI’s 9 times, and in FFF Pune’s 13 times. As the table shows, it’s barely there for any other climate action groups. In part, this can be attributed to the general dearth of direct actions being organised by these climate groups. Most of them have not organised offline direct actions for the past year, negating the need to motivate people to join their actions. Most actions they ask people to engage in can be categorised under low-commitment, individual digital action such as holding a placard with any climate messaging and uploading a picture of oneself with the placard onto their social media, signing petitions, participating in Twitter storms etc. Calls for collective action are usually limited to Global Climate Strikes for almost all FFF chapters.

Secondly, when it comes to diagnostic framing, even while outlining the problem, and the actor causing it, groups miss out on underlining the set of actors who will be impacted. For example, the articulation of the most destructive environmental projects takes place by stating how much land and forest will be cleared, the species which will get impacted and very rarely talking about the people who will get impacted. In environmental campaigning, it’s essential to articulate the “human-ness” of the issue at hand, because people find it difficult to relate to non-human entities of animal species, water, land, forest etc.

Further, most climate groups lack prognostic framing wherein they would counter the rationale provided by the government and industries for the said developmental projects. In a developing country, with a growing middle class, most people view every new developmental project as “necessary” for growth and feeding into high energy and materialistic demands. (Lahiri, 2015) The dominant neoliberal ideology in media, schools, and industry creates a binary between economic development and environmental protection. However, youth-led climate groups rarely provide a counter-narrative on social media, questioning the social-economic-ecological logic behind specific environmentally harmful developmental projects or the larger structures of capitalism, market economy, and world trade, among other structural factors that lead to the climate crisis. Prognostic framing was also found to be weak in youth-led climate action groups of the West. [10] Even FFF’s rhetoric about the responsibility of governments and people in power to act in line with scientific recommendations was not emphasised in social media messaging in India. The theory of change sub-code emerged 6 times in Let India Breathe’s content, 9 times in Youth For Climate India and also 6 times in FFF Mumbai.

Prognostic framing by FFF at large demands that the government “listens to the science”. Throughout the years 2020 and 2021, when I participated in global climate strikes, most young protestors would give speeches and interviews to the media talking about a general rise in temperatures, requesting the governments to listen to scientists and abide by the Paris Agreement to keep temperature rise below 1.5 degrees, a theme common to all global climate strikes across the world. However, this generic approach to the articulation of demands inherently depoliticises it.[10] [30] For instance, what does abiding by the Paris Agreement mean for India? Does it mean large-scale solar plants which displace villagers and strip our land of biodiversity? Does it mean more and more Waste-To-Energy plants to deal with our waste? Or do we want land reform rooftop solar or decentralised waste management systems? Do we want a no-deforestation policy? The implications and questions are endless when we have such a broad demand.

More importantly, though, this kind of discourse around climate strikes does not have a radical vision of what it wants, how it wants to reimagine the social-political-economic and ecological world because it fails to focus on conflicts of interest and the underlying social structures of class and caste (Indian context) which produce those conflicts [10] . Earlier environmental movements in India questioned the very basis of the developmental model undertaken by the Indian government, highlighting resource conflicts and having clear demands related to scrapping off environmentally harmful projects, pushing for natural resource redistribution and local resource governance by communities. (Guha & Alier, 1997)

Digital networks and the rise of climate activist stars

Most groups organised offline actions only on ‘Global Climate Strike’ days, usually two days a year. Otherwise, the majority of the direct actions and events organised were on a digital platform. The youth climate movement post-pandemic has not been able to return to on-ground organising and mobilising. [31] Even though a network society necessitates that we build our movement support through digital media, the salience of physical spaces and on-ground actions remains. Manuel Castells gives three reasons why occupying physical space matters for movements. One, it creates community and enhances the feelings of togetherness. Second, occupying physical space symbolically indicates the power of the people to reclaim their land, space and rights - by invading the state or bourgeoise property. Third, by occupying spaces, we bring together a community on social justice principles creating a public-political space. (Castells, 2011)

Since most framing now occurs on social media, it has been monopolised by a few youth climate activists with a large follower base. The international Fridays For Future movement produced several climate activists who have amassed large follower bases on Instagram and Twitter. [32] In the modern network society, such youth climate movement stars are looked up to for motivational framing, issue framing and a theory of change for the entire movement.

Even in India, during the Fridays For Future strikes in 2019, few climate activists emerged as key influencers on social media. Many young people as part of these voluntary Fridays For Future chapters have had the opportunity to build up social capital through media presence, celebrity engagements, speaking at curated forums by international NGOs, lobbying etc. [33] Although they have amassed a public following and have considerable resources at their disposal, they are failing to provide a framing direction to the youth climate movement. Their public talks and social media content are geared towards a Western audience amassed through engagement with Fridays For Future, thus failing to be relatable to the Indian masses.

Vocabulary of protest

The central issue of over-dependence on digital campaigning along with the deployment of collective action frames borrowed directly from the Fridays For Future movement of the West, has created a chasm between Fridays For Future strikes and the pre-existing vocabulary of protests of environmental movements in India.

Only FFF Pune emerged as a climate action group employing the pre-existing vocabulary of protests in both motivational and prognostic framing. Methods of protest such as hugging trees to prevent them from being cut down, fasting to save a river, and gheraos are all part of the rich protest traditions of India. FFF Pune also successfully managed to invoke public memory about Gandhian ideals of non-violent protest, to mobilise people of older generations. They built on traditions of the Chipko Movement, Narmada Bachao Andolan to not just counter the logic of the Riverfront Development Project but also to mobilise people. They employed many of these tactics in the week of the Global Climate strikes thus integrating the two protest traditions.

However, this is one of the few examples of a youth-led climate action group effectively employing tactics and narratives from the pre-existing protest vocabulary of India. The Fridays For Future core idea of skipping school to join climate strikes on Fridays remains a fundamentally alien one to masses of school children in the Indian context. Countries like the UK, Germany, the U.S.A., Sweden, and other post-materialist countries can employ and mobilise for such a tactic. However, in a developing country like India, it is highly unlikely that masses of children will skip school to attend climate strikes. Firstly, skipping school is viewed as a tactic that privileged private school-educated, urban-based children can engage in. Secondly, climate change in the way it is contextualised currently does not feature in the top priorities of children, whose priorities might have to do with more material needs such as food security, quality schooling, and future employment opportunities among others. The majority of the school children attending climate strikes in 2019 in Delhi, were sent in delegations by their schools. Therefore, as soon as schools stopped sending children for these strikes, the participation of school children in particular also sharply declined.

Conclusion

Urban-based youth protestors of the climate movement in India characteristically belong to the growing middle class. Most FFF protestors across Europe also self-characterised themselves as belonging to the middle class. [34] The Indian urban middle class is central to the shaping of public opinion and debate on the environment through its overwhelming presence in the media, NGOs, bureaucracy, courts etc. [35] Young people joining climate strikes are engaging in a form of environmental citizenship previously unseen in urban youth in the country.

Our analysis found that most of the youth-led climate action groups can identify the issue and communicate it well with others. However, the lack of “problem attribution” and “injustice frames” depoliticizes the issue at hand. They fail to amplify the “victimhood” of those being impacted by the issue, mainly young people and other minority groups according to Fridays For Future’s larger discourse. Furthermore, the absence of motivational framing from the content of the climate action groups can be attributed to the finding that most of them organised on-ground collective actions only in the week of Global Climate Strikes, thus negating the need for content which encourages people to join direct actions. As much as there is a need to work on holistically framing the youth climate movement in the digital arena, we also need to consider how we bridge the gap between digital and on-ground actions. Organising and mobilising for on-ground direct actions necessitates intentional motivational framing grounded in existing popular protest traditions of the country. Fridays For Future as a method of protest and a social movement emerged in Europe. Blind borrowing of its issue, vision and motivational framing prevents its diffusion into other regional contexts.

About the author:

Srijani Datta is currently pursuing an MSc in Sociology at the University of Oxford. She has an interest in environmental urban sociology and writes frequently on those topics. She is a climate justice organiser and activist trainer, having been part of several youth-led climate action groups, most actively in Youth For Climate India.

Declaration of Conflict:

The author has been a volunteer with Youth For Climate India since 2020 and has been one of the directors since it was established as an NGO in India in 2021. She also briefly volunteered with Fridays For Future Delhi from October 2021 to May 2022.