The 'Yellow Vest' Movement in France: Lessons for India

The ‘Yellow Vests’ movement holds lessons that India could learn from. It is pertinent to note that France has a state art of infrastructure and its first class health care system and largely free education is a model to the world. In fact, their re-distributive welfare system is best in Europe and indeed better than Sweden.

Hyderabad: The ‘Yellow Vest’ movement in France is gaining global attention, with its increasing reach and popularity across various pockets of the world. What started as anti-government protests in November 2018, opposing the hike in fuel taxes in France, now culminated itself into a leaderless mass movement, drawing huge crowds to protest on roads by wearing the highly visible yellow vests, which are normally used by French drivers.

However, the movement, as it entered its 25th week, is no more about the fuel taxes. In fact, they were only a trigger for a mass frustration to explode, more particularly about the growing economic inequalities in French society.

This movement brought forward the underlying fault lines of French economic and social edifice, which is otherwise considered to be stable and sound. The immediate result of this mass movement is the decision of French President Emmanuel Macron, to cut down taxes on middle-class workers and announcement of plans to shut down the elite schools of France for top-level civil servants.

Lessons for India:

The ‘Yellow Vests’ movement holds lessons that India could learn from. It is pertinent to note that France has a state art of infrastructure and its first class health care system and largely free education is a model to the world. In fact, their re-distributive welfare system is best in Europe and indeed better than Sweden.

So the first lesson this mass movement offers to India is that it is absolutely possible to witness a mass upsurge, even with the best social security systems in place, if there are income inequalities in the country.

Some intellectuals argue that it is just the wrong public perceptions about the Government policies in France that brought the people to streets. However, it is not the case. In fact, it is the real-time suffering, sense of discrimination, and a feeling of alienation from the mainstream policy discourse that brought them to protests.

Hence, India, a country where the richest 1 per cent of the populations holds 73 per cent of country’s total wealth has every reason to worry about its deepening and widening inequalities and should resort to course correction.

Addressing the issues like corruption, improvement in governance, betterment in the delivery of public services with the interventions of technology, investments in physical and social infrastructure could go a long way in addressing economic inequalities in India.

The Second lesson that this mass protests in France offer is the way to deal with an uprising of masses. The simple thing the Government did was to just listen to the people first. The Government raised curtains to a nationwide debate, sought suggestions, opened portals and there was a flood of inputs. What happens to these inputs is secondary. What is more important is to make the very people who are protesting, a part of the solution by involving them in policy discourse at a large scale.

Given the federal structure of India and its subsequent division into local bodies, India too can trek the path of actively engaging in a two-way public communication mode. It helps understand the ground realities and further assists in designing policies aimed at reducing inequalities. It is in this context it is worth remembering the words of American editor and writer, Noth Webster, who rightly said that, “The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, One principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes”.