Vidarbha has been the birthplace of several social movements rooted in agrarian distress, forest rights, and regional identity.

Over the decades, activists, peasants, and tribal communities in Vidarbha have organised to demand recognition, legal rights, and fair development. These movements reflect the region’s historical grievances and its struggle to assert its voice within a larger state.

In this article, we present a list of four movements that emerged from Vidarbha, each with its own trajectory, leaders, challenges, and turning points. This listicle will give readers factual insight into how these movements began, what they achieved, and how they continue to resonate in Vidarbha’s public life.

1. Statehood Demand for Vidarbha

The movement for a separate Vidarbha state dates back to the 1930s, before the “Samyukta Maharashtra” concept had taken shape. In 1938, the Central Provinces legislature passed a resolution to form a separate “Mahavidarbha” state with Nagpur as its capital. After independence, leaders such as M. S. Aney and Brijlal Biyani presented memoranda to the State Reorganisation Commission, which in 1956 recommended a separate state for Vidarbha. Despite that, when Maharashtra was formed in 1960, Vidarbha was merged into its fold under the “one language, one state” principle.

Over the decades, numerous organisations have taken up the cause. The Vidarbha Janata Congress was founded in 2002 by Jambuwantrao Dhote explicitly for this purpose. In 2003, two former Union ministers, Vasant Sathe and N. K. P. Salve, launched the Vidarbha Rajya Nirman Congress to press for statehood.

In recent years, the Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti (VRAS) has become one of the most visible groups pushing the demand. In 2025, statehood activists decided to burn a symbolic “Holi” of the 1960 Nagpur Pact, calling it a betrayal of the promises to Vidarbha. On another occasion, on May 1 (Maharashtra Day), they hoisted the Vidarbha flag at Samvidhan Chowk in Nagpur as a mark of assertion.

While the statehood movement has never succeeded in achieving formal separation, it has kept alive the conversation over development imbalance, representation, and identity in Vidarbha.

2. Peasant Protests and the Crisis of Farmer Suicides

Vidarbha has long been a crucible of agrarian distress, especially in the last few decades. The region’s dependence on rainfed agriculture, volatile input costs, and weak institutional support has led to cycles of debt and crop failure.

By the late 1990s and into the 2000s, the wave of farmer suicides drew national attention. The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, led by Kishor Tiwari, maintained detailed logs of such cases and raised public awareness about the crisis. In 2006, the group reported that in August alone, 105 farmers in Maharashtra had committed suicide, many from Vidarbha, and pressed for full debt waivers and fair cotton prices.

These protests were not one-off events. Farmers in cotton-growing districts like Yavatmal repeatedly mobilised to demand relief, compensation for crop damage, and institutional reforms. In 2023, activists claimed that in just three days, five farmers in Yavatmal ended their lives, raising the year’s total count in Vidarbha to more than 1,500. The movement around farmer suicides has stayed alive through public demonstrations, media activism, and pressure on the State and Central governments to re-examine agricultural policy in Vidarbha.

3. Tribal and Forest Rights Movement: Mendha-Lekha

In the tribal and forested districts of Vidarbha, another movement unfolded centred on securing rights over forests. One of the most prominent cases is the village of Mendha-Lekha in Gadchiroli district. In 2009, it became the first village in India to receive Community Forest Rights (CFR) under the Forest Rights Act (FRA).

Mendha’s tribal residents, primarily Gond, had historically held customary control over local forests. Under the FRA, they claimed legal rights to use and manage the forest produce (not timber), and obtained the right to cultivate bamboo, auctioning it for community benefit. The village adopted participatory systems: its gram sabha acts as the governing authority, resolving disputes, managing infrastructure projects, and enforcing rules for forest use.

Over time, Mendha has inspired over 1,500 villages across Vidarbha to seek CFR under the FRA. It has gained national attention as a model of how tribal communities can reclaim rights over forests. In recent years, the village also moved to be recognised under Gramdan (village land trust) status under the Maharashtra Gramdan Act, a step toward formal self-governance. Yet even after state notification, Mendha continues to press officials to fully empower it as a distinct panchayat.

4. Agrarian Mobilisation under Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti

While the farmer suicide protests present one strand, the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) has acted as a sustained grassroots organisation linking distress, activism, and public organisation across Vidarbha. The body has played a central role in coordinating protests, compiling data on suicides, and demanding institutional intervention.

In 2010, VJAS opposed a ₹1,000 crore relief package announced by the Maharashtra government, claiming it excluded farmers of Vidarbha and called for indefinite protests beginning December 29. Over the years, VJAS and its leaders have drawn attention to how relief packages, crop compensation, and loan waivers often bypass distressed farmers in Vidarbha.

The organisation also collaborates with the media, publishes suicide logs, engages legal means, and pressures political bodies. Its consistent documentation of distress has made Vidarbha’s farmer suicides a recurring policy issue. In that sense, VJAS represents not just episodic agitation but a structure through which farmers in Vidarbha organise, speak, and demand accountability.

In the landscape of Vidarbha’s social and political life, the four movements above stand as significant milestones. They rest on distinct premises, statehood, agrarian distress, forest rights, and organised activism, but together they reflect enduring structural challenges in resource distribution, local governance, identity, and justice. Each movement has grown from local roots, with tribal communities, farmers and regional activists mobilising in public spaces, courts, and legislatures.

Their vitality continues even today, as proponents renew demands, confront bureaucratic delays, and adapt to changing conditions. What persists is not a singular narrative but a complex web of agency, claim, resistance and assertion born in Vidarbha’s fields, forests, and villages.